A robotic society ...almost without vision, individuiality or feelings?
Perhaps only real pain and death creates reaction and shock ....but not always.
We have killing without true reason and anger without direction.
Whatever we do not have in rural France.....we do not aspire to this way of life...
not as yet.
I like your expression “he was terribly critical”... Of course has France changed! In Germany it was considered posh to sent your kid to France, to a French school. It wasn't that funny for me being German because everything connected with Germany was Nazi. What would the world be without clichés of simple minds? To criticise anything French was violating a sacrilege and the French “revolution” was a worldwide benefit... I meet a son who's father was a millionaire & a communist and the son found it absolutely legitimate to be in this posh boarding school while at the same time thousands other French youth from poor families have had hard times. It was all so absurd. But then: Once you get used to the absurd you feel quite at ease at all times and everywhere. And when you get older, then this is just the good 'ole grumpiness. After all, since when hotel rooms are spotless, or since when young people did not love “convenient” food? It was just other “junk food”. So, in the end grumpiness can be helpful in overcoming unfulfilled dreams. Since the invention of beneficent achievements such as mobile phones and Internet with the even richer blessing for profit maximization for the ingenious advertising industry, the youth nowadays enjoys to spend trivial pleasures of everyday life more for SMS's, chatting, partying, facebooking, blabla, pink icecream etc. I think the problem what might cause the “terrible” critics is that it is the same from Rio over NYC to London to Paris to Moscow, Beijing to Tokyo, the NewTechnologies have created a kind of autistic culture, a truly global village. And in this village everybody does what he wants, even a concierge...
yes...we all have a life to live!
Nothing wrong with a decent cup of coffee.....or passing the day talking about
it...and all that comes to mind.
It is friendly...it is exchanging ideas.
I live in Montpellier, I like it, I lived in Canterbury, I liked it, I lived in Sevenoaks , I didn't like it, I lived in Newport IOW I liked it a bit , I lived in Herne, I loved it . But I couldn't tell you what the coffee was like in any of the places I lived .... I had a life to live ...just saying .
Nothing wrong with Harvey Nic's. Personally I prefer Peter Jones.
You're not wrong Brian.
Skinny Latte. Steamed skimmed milk for interns with an eating disorder. Flat white. Coffee with milk as drunk by our cousins in the Antipodes.
I have been in France for over 20 years. My memories of the UK as a little girl in the 60s and 70s is of indifferent food in restaurants and cafés, first class hotels with dreadful decor and awful food and a general indifference and rudeness from staff in shops and restuarants. So for me things have improved since then. However, the traffic is appalling in the UK, even in very rural areas and the motorways are full on all lanes, where I am used to France with hardly any cars.
I am in a very rural area in France where even women younger than me do a lot of cooking, making their own paté and foie gras. However, the key word here is 'women'. Women no longer want to be the only ones doing the household chores and all the cooking, they are not going to spend their free time after work preparing elaborate meals and until we see a fairer distribution of chores, then convenience will win. It is still rather a macho society where I live, ie women don't drink much alcohol and certainly not spirits, more than one apéro will label you, as a woman, as a heavy drinker. It is true that French chic doesn't really exist in the country and I also find that the French are very casual in their dress for work and will never be separated from their jeans. I have taught in schools and college/lycée and all the teachers and pupils wear jeans practically all the time whereas my friends who are teachers in England are not allowed to wear jeans to work and the pupils have uniforms.
It is difficult to compare France and the UK as I go back to the UK for holidays and you don't have the same perspective as living there full time.
I don't think he meant you, Simon probably, but not to worry.
All the best with the new life Doreen, which it will be. report back sometimes so that others can see though. It may help a few people wanting to decide.
Good point. I have been going to NY since the mid-1970s and one of the things hard to find in the USA is properly hot coffee. I guess burning American mouths is not on. Espresso is usually the hottest. In St Louis I was told by the proprietor of a coffee shop that hot coffee is not served anywhere in the world! I suppose he had limits to his geographical range. Hot espresso is one thing I can find here no problem, curse the limit my cardiologist has imposed on me.
You forgot the 'months' after the number five ;-)
I think you must have answered as I was editing Brian. I realised my mistake straight away. I do like SFN’ ability to edit.
The only coffee that I drink out, Simon, is an espresso. They are always hot. I guess that you must be a generation or so younger than me as I have never been part of the Starbucks and Costa crowd. They seem to have arrived after I left the UK. I have enjoyed many a Latte Macchiato in Italy and Germany but the sickly brown stuff served in trendy coffee shops in England has never done it for me. There again, coffee drinking is not at the centre of my life. I did go into the original Starbucks in Seattle but they didn’t seem to sell hot drinks of any kind as they were more interested in selling souvenir mugs to Japanese tourists. I got a milk shake in a cafe overlooking Puget Sound instead, probably much better all round.
Latte. Steamed milk for the infantile American. Oh and just the merest trace of coffee. Nobody over the age of five should drink Latte or Cappucino after nine in the morning.
No there should be no competition between France and UK....but there
seems to be!
This Frenchman brought up in the vines went off to seek a distant
land...and clearly liked the bright lights of London and stayed.
All that abundance of cheap deals and strings of coffee shops becomes
boring after a few days. Maybe is you are very rich and can avoid Acton,
Shepherds Bush and Harlesden and dine in the finest places and shop in
Harvey Nicolas you can remain interested for a week.
Some people are made that way.
Good luck on your new adventure Doreen.
A friend of mine....catering trained and business minded opened a type of gasto pub in the countryside in uk.
He had to sell....It was almost impossible to make money.
It was hard to sell the property.
I have a friend....who is an extremely talented chef and he is in a very
great area of KEW....[as in gardens]
He is trying to sell....the financial returns are not adequate when you compare...stress
to cash.
We have a choice....here or there?
ROTFL! Says the guy who's managed to weave in Turkey, Greece, China, India, Ethiopia, Brazil and of course Italy! :-)
Then you have drifted off topic to the World of Armstrong by Simon Armstrong and not about how France has changed because coffee apparently has not.
We went into a Subway near Macon only to leave sandwichless. Why? The same poor selection of fillings you see in the supermarkets.
The traffic in UK is awful. We have had a deviation passing on our Route Touristique for a week and didn’t we notice the difference.
France suits us too, we have been made so welcome, but I do miss a good takeaway occasionally.
Amazing! Look Brian I'll say this one more time - I don't like French coffee - is that allowed or should I go directly to the guillotine? And for info, when I'm in Rome - I do exactly what the Romans do ! ;-)