Eating and sleeping: French national sports

Stop the presses, hold the front page! The French eat and sleep more than any other nation in the developed world. At least that's the word out of the OECD (Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development) today.
Following a survey of 18 countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas, the OECD discovered that the average French person sleeps 8.8 hours every night - enjoying more time dans leurs lits than Americans and Spaniards.
And - surprise, surprise - the French take much longer lunches than any of their counterparts in other countries, dedicating double the amount of time to le dejeuner than Americans, Britons or Mexicans (a fact that is especially not surprising in the case of the Mexicans - have you ever tried to eat a full meal through an anti-swine flu face mask? It's a bitch).
So what does this OECD survey tell us about the French? That they have a great work-life balance? That insead of scoffing a sandwich at their desk they value the importance of sitting down, making conversation and breaking bread? That they place enormous emphasis on the art of eating, the quality of foodstuffs they ingest and time spent recharging their Gallic batteries? Or does this OECD report simply highglight the fact that the French are a bunch of food-obsessed, narcoleptic work-phobes?
There's no doubt that the quality of life on offer in Paris is especially high. And I'm not talking the types of dwellings or relative incomes. I'm talking about the French art de vivre - their inimitable way of making the otherwise occasionally pedestrian business of existing into a stylish art form. It's in the frenzy they whip themselves into over a cut of meat, or a glass of wine or a slice of foie gras. It's in the care they take with their appearance, the borderline haughtiness with which they carry themselves and the infuriating smugness with which they consider themselves superior to every other country in the world.
With all of that in your corner, you'd sleep well too.

Showgirl cupcakes

Please excuse the laziness with this blog post. It's the end of a long day - a day when I took my first tentative steps to getting rid of some of the winter flab by working out with a personal trainer.

As a result of the torture - I mean, the carefully constructed cardio-vascular and muscular workout that Toni the-pocket-rocket-Spaniard put me through this afternoon, I can barely move my arms, much less type.

Hence, I am copping out by referring you to a blog entry that I wrote for the tastefully talented Mr David Lebovitz - food blogger extraordinaire and fellow inhabitor of Paris' intrinsically groovy 11th arrondissement. David lives just down the road - and as any of you who regularly follow his blog will know, he cooks and bakes like a demon - which is sure to ruin the monastic diet that Toni has prepared for me. On the subject of which, I have a question: is it wrong or somehow sacreligious to live in Paris, the food capital of the world, and be on a diet? Personally, I think so...
But I digress.

If you follow this link to David's blog, you can read all about the cupcakes that my exceptionally talented wife, Shay likes to bake. And yes, the accompanying photo is one of Shay at work, on stage at the Lido, where she high-kicks each night for a living.

Revealed: the real reason French women don't get fat

A couple of years back, an utterly irksome French woman wrote an equally irksome book called "French Women Don't Get Fat". Trading on a well-worn stereotype and playing to the collective fears of larger-boned women in other countries, the book tore its tedious way up best-seller lists all across the developed world.

The author, a cringeworthy old matron from Paris' rareified 16th arrondissement, maintained that French women remain svelte by eating small portions and taking the stairs instead of the lift.

In my book* (*denotes gratuitous, self-serving plug), I argue that the reason French women are generally so slim is because of the nervous energy they expend worrying who their husband is sleeping with** (**denotes gross generalisation about an entire nation's apparent lack of marital fidelity).

But the truth it seems, is altogether more pedestrian.

While wandering down my rue this morning, I noticed this poster in the window of my local pharmacie. It's an ad for a pair of tights that in my home country might euphemistically be referred to as "control tights". In the interests of calling a spade a spade, these tights are essentially a modern day girdle - an item of apparel whose sole purpose is to suck in a lady's tummy.

"Two sizes less, WITHOUT DIET (and) WITHOUT SPORT" declares the advertisement.
Non-French women of the world take note. You can stop beating yourself up over why you appear to packing a few more pounds than your average French counterpart. The fact is, you're not. You're just not cunning (or weight-obsessed) enough to hide them behind a pair of super-tight stockings.

Getting fit - French style

If you've had the unmitigated pleasure of reading my book, A Town Like Paris (available now at all good book stores, mention my name and you might get a discount...) you'll know that I occasionally like to drop into my local gym for a spot of anthropological research.

It's always amusing to watch Parisians go about the business of getting fit. As with most activities requiring actual physical exertion, the Parisians go about it with about the same amount of gusto as most of the rest of the world reserves for the eating of offal (ie: not very much).

So it shouldn't have come as a huge surprise when yesterday, at the end of one of my infrequent sessions at the Club Med Gym (or Club Merde as it is known amongst locals for the semi-permanent stench of shit that hangs like a pall over the change rooms) the receptionist handed back my card with a complimentary bar of chocolate.

Swiss chocolatiers Milka had obviously brokered a deal with the Club Merde gyms to hand out promotional bars of their new "sugar free" chocky bars to the Parisian gym-going public.

Now, I'm no nutritionist - and it's true that I have been known to follow up a gym session with the occasional beer session - but chocolate? After a workout? At a gym? I mean, surely even the fact that it is 'sugar free' does not qualify chocolate as a wholly recommended foodstuff to follow up a workout.

I'd just spent half an hour flailing about on the treadmill. I was red-faced, sweaty and exhausted from my attempts to shed a bit of winter fat - and here was the gym offering me a chocolate bar as reward for my efforts.

Only in France ...

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig('s ear)

One of my bi-weekly joys is wandering down the rue to the fresh food market on the Boulevard Richard Lenoir.

Held every Tuesday and Friday, they are a bustling, noisy, colourful affirmation of life. The produce is fresh, the cheeses are ripe, the fishmongers are bawdy and the vendors are vocal.

And while living in France has largely desensitized me to butcher window displays of chickens with their heads attached and skinned rabbits with their eyes intact, there's one stall at the market that never fails to gross me out.

More than one of the charcutiers sell pork - in all its many variations. There's pork belly, pork roast, pork chops and more pork lard than you can poke a hardened artery at. And for the truly adventurous, there are pigs trotters (feet) and - wait for it - pig's ears and pig's snouts.

And not just plain old pig's ears, mind you. Some are even coated in a kind of aspic (what's the old saying about silk purses and sow's ears?)

I can't begin to imagine how you prepare a pig's ear or a pig's snout for eating. Do you lightly sauté them? Boil the living crap out of them? Or hurl them straight into the dog's bowl where surely they belong?

And no, this is not an invitation to email through your favourite offal recipes. As adventurous as I like to believe my palate is, I'm happy to stay in the dark on this one.

The Love Pad - revealed

Hello people,

Since the publication of A Town Like Paris, I receive emails almost daily from readers. The feedback is generally positive (phew) and the wishes are almost invariably warm. So let me say a big, fat, public thank you to everyone who has taken the time to write.

Many of you have enquired after the Love Pad - eager to wrap your peepers around this famed den of seduction and iniquity. How, I am repeatedly asked, could an apartment really exist with orange-fabric covered walls.

And so, it is with great pleasure, that I present to you, gentle readers, a few photos from inside the Love Pad.


These are a couple of shots of me in the Love Pad, taken recently by my great friend, and photographer extraordinaire, Carla Coulson.

See - I told you. Orange walls. Stranger than fiction ...