parismarisamadonna

The Fool on the Hill – The Beatles 1967

If you believe the latest river of incomprehensible blah that has spewed forth from the mouth of Lady Gaga, “everyone is Special”, “everyone is beautiful” and “everyone is born this way”. I am sure it is easy to be weird and clever and gauche and wear dresses made of meat when you go home and count your money to pass a lazy Sunday afternoon but she does have a point. And I don’t mean one of the mysterious points that have recently appeared on her face.

Some people are red heads, some people are adopted, some people have same-sex parents and others have a sexy beauty mark over their lip like Marilyn. We are all born with something cute and interesting that makes us unique and that something will become intrinsic to our character as we age.

In my case, it is simple. I am born on April Fool’s Day.

It has to be said, as far as Birthdays go, the only one I can imagine being worse is Christmas Day. Not for the lack of presents, just because you would have to share your Birthday with Jesus. He has a habit of taking up all of the airtime at that time of year so it is kind of like being a twin with the most perfect person who ever lived (if you believe that of course) leading to a life of unfortunate comparisons. Although rather handy for miserly parents, “Jesus would have been happy with a new swimsuit instead of the Barbie car! He was born in a stable”. 

Being born on the only day of the year that has the word Fool in the title leads to years and years of pain, largely at the hands of that cruellest of enemies, teenage boys. And a string of banal jokes from a father who never really came to terms with the fact that he was father, let alone father of a girl who spoke to much and was born on the day named after idiots, unlike his son who was born on the day of the lover…And so to the unfortunate comparisons.

Thus was the stigma that gave rise to the defence mechanism that became the loudest mouth on the largest continent that has stood the test of time for 35 hard worn and shouted years. I am born on the day of the fool and so I will wear that name with pride.

None can gurn with such enthusiasm causing the teacup sized eyes to thrust forward as captured in an unfortunate portrait photo at 17 that Motherbear still displays on a mantle piece for all to remark the fool with the unfortunate grin. None can laugh louder ensuring she takes the full brunt of a teacher’s punishment, talk so much she is reprimanded and forced to stand outside (only now by her employer rather than her French professor), run more like a spasmodic girl arms and legs akimbo, throw any ball like a gay adolescent boy or at the ripe old age of 35 still play with toys.

The fool got more Lego for her Birthday.

All aboard the Hogwarts Express for Hogwarts and the overcrowded table!

In my defence, I have now graduated from the really childish Harry Potter castles and trains to the much more adult and intellectual full-scale model of the Tower Bridge. A fool needs her foolish accessories. Let’s make them expensive childish ones that require you to take a trip to the seventh floor of Galleries Lafayette, where the kid’s clothes are….and the kids..who stare at the Lady going Gaga for a giant box of Lego. Toys that take two days to build and have more creamy stone coloured pieces than you have ever seen in your life. Two whole days you were perfectly relaxed and Zen and didn’t think about the W word once!

 

Maybe I could start prescribing Lego to Gaga?

  Getting started with 2 of what became 22 Tupperware containers to help separate the pieces

The morning after - the Two Towers on route to becoming Mt Doom

Finished, but now in need of somewhere to eat...

Complete with mini Red Bus and Black Cab - impenetrable traffic jam not included

Strawberry Fields Forever – the Beatles 1967

If you, like me, have often contemplated when would be the most appropriate time to invade Germany, I am glad to advise that that time is now. I will qualify this statement by adding that sheer unadulterated boredom is the long suffering companion of the globetrotter who has moved continent too often to form long-term friendships and lives alone. So when not exploring the wonders of smashing bricks on my iPad or cleaning one of the seven flat surfaces to be found in the-worlds-smallest-and-dampest-apartment-but-it-has-location-location-location I naturally turn my mind to the great metaphysical questions of this life and the next and ponder the invasion former dictatorships that became all too cocky for my liking what with their monopoly of the that holy trilogy of the luxury car market, power tools and blonde haired big-boobed supermodels, they kind of deserve it. Basically, if Germany were a man, it would be Tiger Woods in full mid life crisis.

So back to my point, I admit sometimes I get lost as well.

If you wanted to lodge a full-scale invasion on Deutschland, now is the time. You could ask Gaddafi to lend you a couple of bazookas and catch the very efficient hybrid bus from the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin and walk unhindered to the front door of the Reichstag and shoot. You would hit no one and no one would be there to stop you.

It is Easter school holidays and so, every single one of the good citizens of the Bundesrepublik is, as we speak, ordering a kaffee and a kroizzant in a café somewhere in Paris. Perhaps after spending so long cut in half, they have now taken steps to stay close together at all times, holidaying as an entire reunited nation in France in the spring before invading the Iberian peninsula for the summer.

It is so great to see them out and about in Paris. The entire TouristFahrt# busload of middle aged men and women sharing one single hairstyle, a mullet reminiscent of Olivia Newton-John in 1982, walks the streets in two long parallel lines, maintaining a measured pace (a goosestep?) ensuring they never lose sight of their safari-suited tour guide just as I once did …when I was in kindergarten…and I was 4, not 40.

Along with the daylight savings time, warm sun, the Germans and the icy cold pink wine come the strawberries.

 

The best thing about living in a country that does not lay claim to eight different temperate, tropical and subtropical climates is that you only eat fruit when it is in season and it actually tastes good. In Australia, you eat pineapple, tomatoes and apples all year round. A part from a few exceptions, stone fruit only comes out for the summer and mandarins (not clementines) make seasonal appearances in winter, but on the whole, despite the watery tepid taste that comes from spending as long in a truck as it did on a tree, you get everything pretty much all year round. 

In France, where the sun only shines for six months, we spend half of the year eating potatoes, cabbage and mushrooms, various declinations of a khaki coloured sludge, but I don’t complain.

 

I don’t complain because I know that like the Germans rising from the Pilsner induced winter hibernation, spring will come and everything will turn green and red and pink and yellow just like my new Lego collection…more about that soon.

For the past month I have eaten a punnet* of strawberries everyday and two bunches of asparagus every week. I will let you imagine what effect that has had on my ‘transit’ as they say in French, but you can indeed read a scientific explanation here.

Now back to my metaphysical question pondering (why is Gwyneth Paltrow a singer now, what will Kate wear at the wedding), and if I have time, a spot of light dusting before I open another bottle of pink wine and watch masterchef….

 

 

#it always makes me giggle, childish I know

 

*Spell-check did not like that word so I googled it. Indeed, our American friends and as such this software do not use that word to describe a basket of strawberries.

 

Ring of Fire – Johnny Cash 1963 - Reprise

As I wait with baited breath for Masterchef Australia to kick off again, God defend New Zealand for giving us their local version of the world dominating amateur cooking competition show.

Hosted by the Kiwi* that runs Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant in Melbourne, the Kiwi that trained with Gordon Ramsay before he opened Euro in Auckland and some other mumsy bloke with nerdy glasses who one can only assume did not train with Gordon Ramsay, I am inclined to think that this is my favourite of the global versions. Quite simply, the myriad influence on NZ cuisine and the resulting fusion cooking is exceptional.

Every week, the contestants are throwing out dishes that combine international flavours with the best local ingredients. Ok, so they cook the world’s best lamb, kiwi fruit, manuka honey and harpuka pretty much every week. 

Cameron, my favourite contestant, who is either a security guard in an R&B nightclub, or a forward for the All Blacks when he isn’t fricasseeing something, always seems amazed that he is even on the show let alone winning more than half of the challenges. In a recent Spanish challenge, another favourite, Michael, of Chinese origin, thought Spain was in South America. The student contender has an encyclopaedic knowledge of Asian cuisine but hasn’t yet extended his curiosity beyond the Indian Ocean. And of course everything is voiced over by a bloke with a crazy Kiwi accent. So much fun for the Australian viewer as they run for their Chilly Bins!

However, taking the Toque for best cooking show has to be Top Chef France.

Coming to a ratings dominating conclusion on Monday night when Stephanie injected olive oil into ice cream to take the title from runner up Fanny (yes I giggled), the significant advantage of this show, compared to other amateur, or non-French versions, is that the competitors are fully trained French Michelin starred chefs. So they can actually like, you know, cook.

Completing challenges that went from feeding ox-tongue to children to cooking in a 5 star Parisian Hotel restaurant, the pinnacle of the two-month epicurean epic was the challenge that required feeding typical French foods to… the English. The six contestants were required to delight the taste buds of three English judges with an ingredient chosen from under a cloche that was very particular to France; snails, frog’s legs, lambs tongues, blood sausage, and andouillettes. This last of the ingredients is actually a sort of Toulousain haggis made from pig’s tripe stuffed into a pig’s stomach. If I can just go out on a limb here, are the good folk of Toulouse, proportionately wealthy in the Hexagone thanks to the local Airbus factory, so hard up for cash that they need to eat the guts stuffed with guts of an animal that itself eats the s**t of other animals? God only knows what it must smell like!

But back to the challenge.

Each contestant decided to mince, crumb and fry their particular item because, in case you don’t know, and I didn’t, English people only eat fried things. Citizen though not resident of the Land of Hope and Glory, I was rather offended by their ongoing commentary of how badly they eat in England and how little taste they have, but I was soon proved wrong. The girl who took home the prize made fried frogs legs balls served with pistachio tartare sauce.

 

Well then, bitter much about losing the six nations?

 

 

* Clarification for the French. Kiwi in English is Kiwifruit. Even people from New Zealand refer to themselves as Kiwis saving the much longer New Zealander and I promise that no one is offended. The moniker comes from their national bird, not green fruit.

 

We Are Family – Sister Sledge 1979

Yesterday, minding my own business while I waited for Guillaume, one of the butchers at Jacky Gaudin a butcher slash abattoir perched on a corner of the Rue des Abbesses, to shave my bacon and dice my breasts, Guy, another of the carcass cutters employed at the slaughterhouse leaned over the counter to ask me what I thought of Explorer Families a new television show airing in the usual time slot of the French version of the competition reality TV show, Survivor. 

I hardly registered his question because I had not seen it. In fact, I had made a conscious decision not to watch it.

What ensued was an animated discussion among all of the seven butchers, and the fifteen or so people in the queue waiting to be served. “But oh Madame*, I was sure you would be proud to watch it, indeed I think it is formidable and breathtaking and surely Madame you must be so proud!”

Or Not.

You see, the premise of this latest craze on the télévision française is; what is the absolute worst thing you can inflict upon a modern French family forcing them to work together, acknowledge their weaknesses and repair poor relationships with unwanted stepchildren? 

Easy, send them to Australia.

As all Australians know, when Victorian Englanders were given the option of hanging in the Town Square, or transportation to Australia, most chose death. But now, in 2011, it seems the French are borrowing from the capital punishment of channel neighbours to create ratings winning Reality TV.

Six families composed of mothers, fathers, stepchildren, stepparents and half-siblings from all over France, and even Belgium (they are the ones who speak funny), have been sent to Australia to camp and challenge each other in Carisbrook. I can only assume the show was filmed before the devastating Christmas floods because one of the least likeable of the peroxide-blonde mothers complains non-stop about the heat and lack of water. Evidently when told she would be sent to l’outback australien, she thought she was going to the remote suburbs of inner-Sydney rather than the Queensland desert.

Jeff is so committed to his job he married a Survivor

Denis Brogniart, the French equivalent of F1 commentator James Allen and also host of Explorer Families and French Survivor (inexplicably still named Koh Lanta after their premiere Thai destination despite the fact that due to Trade Union regulations governing the working conditions of the participants of French reality TV shows, the seven subsequent seasons were filmed exclusively in French territories cf. New Caledonia), schooled at the Jeff Probst school of “I am so rugged and hard-core I wear a safari shirt with dual front pockets”, has done an excellent job of adapting his F1 honed commentary skills to the desert challenges the families are forced to endure in the hope of winning 140K. Although the link between his day job detailing the Monaco Grand Prix and rolling your mum through a dirt track while blindfolded is still lost on me.

    Denis and his perm when he is not styling it with Ferrari and Maclaren

Understanding the franglais of Dennis and the trade union covered 35 hour week contestants as they moan and complain their way through their sun drenched days, is an unexpected joy that adds another layer of interest for the Anglophone viewer. Lucky enough to win the roll your mum through the dirt challenge, one family were sent to ayran eyelan (Heron Island) to search for swidleep (Sweet Lip) with a guide called Stiv (Steve). 

Slightly alarming is the fact that they keep remarking on the wildlife, especially the grenouilles. I think one of the dads, sick and tired of eating tuna and boiled potatoes from cans, was eyeing off the jumping amphibians, most specifically their legs, sautéed in a little butter, garlic and parsley perhaps.

However the reason for my ardent protests against this really rather funny show is that it is called Explorer Families.

One of my colleagues, the Bride, will laugh as she reads this as she remarked this past week that she has never known such a patriot as me. My riposte, rather hurt as I have never thought of myself as patriot* was simply that French people are so wholly unaware of the existence of Australia and the issue of her shores that I feel compelled to make it known when a story about an Australian wins an Oscar – the King’s Speech – or when an Australian holds the number one spot on the French top 40 – Kylie – or when an Australian invented device holds the secret to why a recently discovered French plane fell out of the sky – the black box.

Such a sentiment is only further inflamed when a television show about whingy teenagers arguing with their parents is entitled explorers. Like Australia still needs to be found? 

M Chirac certainly had no trouble locating Australia when he set off repeated nuclear explosions off the coast of ayran eyelan in the late nineties as oztraleens in grinpiss fishing boats begged loudly that he stop. 

All the same, watching a mum cower at sharks and teenagers burn as they try to tan under the desert sun makes for compelling, if a little patronising, television.

Survivors Ready!

 

 

 

#Despite my repeated requests to be addressed as Mademoiselle, and my oft repeated remark that Madame B is in fact over fifty and lives in Sydney, local custom requires that once you have a visible wrinkle, despite your actual legal marital status, you are indeed a Madame

 

*The French word for patriot is Chauvin which in English implies a specific prejudice against women making her comment rather more insulting than she perhaps intended