Thursday, April 19, 2007

What is it about the French?

A couple of weeks ago my lovely English friends Dishy Debs and Sexy Sarah had organised a small dinner at one of my favourite local restaurants. Afterwards, we repaired to a nearby bar called Salud, scene of their famous Christmas Party (where I was inveigled into playing Santa), where we found the place unexpectedly packed, a birthday party in progress. A birthday party for a young Frenchwoman. Attended by lots of other young Frenchwomen.

I'm afraid our respectably gorgeous female companions soon lapsed into a kind of invisibility against this solid background of eye-popping beauty..... and effortless stylishness, coquettish vivacity, such casual elegance, such provoking hauteur.

The Choirboy and I were both falling 'in love', or 'in lust' at any rate, every few seconds,
counting off each new heart spasm one by one: "Four, five, six.... god, that's six times I've been smitten while waiting to get served at the bar."

Part of the appeal, no doubt, (our excuse, anyway, for our woefully promiscuous, girl-hopping gaze) is that we realised we had no chance whatsoever with any of them.

We actually made our excuses and left early, to preserve our sanity.

God, what is it about the French?
Je ne sais quoi.

Je ne saurai jamais.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

you slipped another one in. were it not for the link back in the Pool Bar post, I might have never read it!

doing a top 10 list looks like it might be more of a challenge than I anticipated, considering the posts slipped in after I'd passed through that day's posts.

Froog said...

Sorry - CONSTANT VIGILANCE is called for.

I think I explained to you that the posts are time-stamped according to when I start writing them. Sometimes, time pressures force me to save unfinished drafts, which only get published when I have time to finish polishing them, which might not be until the next day.

Moreover, because my Blogger account is running on GMT (Is that a deliberate piece of misdirection from the days of playing 'Where in the world am I?' or a sentimental homage to the land of my birth? I really don't know.), STRANGE things sometimes happen in the early hours of the morning: to wit, a lot of posts (since this is when I do MOST of my writing) end up being labelled as the day before; but then, if I write a number of posts together, the last one may be labelled TODAY, and you may incautiously suppose that THIS is the only new one since you clocked off the previous day.

And then..... well, sometimes the 'clock' on Blogger is just all over the place, and even I am confused as to why posts have ended up with the time & date they have.

It is possible to tweak the clock/date setting on each individual post to minimise this confusion and give a more honest and accurate record of when posts actually appear on the blog - but usually I just can't be bothered with this.

Froog said...

You don't actually have an opinion on the CONTENT of this post??

What's your feeling about French MEN?

Anonymous said...

yes, you did explain the clock thing before. I merely commented online as an extension of my offline comment. and you are just being lazy about not fixing the time stamp...

I did think about it ('it' being my opinion on the Content.)

But as the question surrounded the beauty of French Women and I agree that I have met some stunningly beautiful French women and I agree that most of my friends who are men, go gah-gah over them (There was quite a large group of French study abroads at my university and they all stayed on my dorm floor - so we became friends and I witnessed my American friends who were male making asses of themselves everytime they'd come over for a visit and meet my floormates) I didn't think there was much for me to add.

But then you bring up the question of French Men - I am an equal opportunity admirer - French men, or British men, or American men, or...

Alas, the hottest French man I know is playing for the other side.

Anonymous said...

I re-read The Planet of Beautiful Women.

One thing comes to mind. If you're surrounded by so many beautiful women who are compatible enough to be your friends, and yet, you are single... perhaps you ARE too picky.

I mean, obviously, all these women find you sufficiently appealing to be friends with you - so chances are high they also find you sufficiently appealing to be something more.

But, I bet, like the beautiful French women, you just assume you have no chance whatsoever with any of them. And so, you never ask?

Or, maybe you realize sustaining a relationship is much more time consuming then your emotional schedule allows?

Or, perhaps it is just funner to be in love with the idea of finding and pursuing that one love, than it is to actually be in love and stay in love?

Or, ... other?