Month: <span>September 2004</span>

What a holiday! Paris was great apart from French waiters. You only realise after the fact that the reason they are so much nicer than the British equivalent is because they demand money – and no, I don’t mean expect – the tip is on the bill, but not included in the total. This makes it invisible to the regular Brit, who politely looks at the total without scrutinising the entire bill, sees service est compris and pays the total. Try it once and wait for the fireworks! What this type of playing nice for payment boils down to is a form of prostitution.

Apart from that, the city of Paris is beautiful, the roads are driveable, even if some are peages. I sat on a beach and suddenly realised there were no drunken louts, no radios at all, never mind those turned up so loud that the entire beach must listen to it. The water was clean and patrolled constantly.

We did play the game of ‘spot the fat person’ – invariably they were not French – most likely suspects were British or American!

Final surprise goes to the trip home. Flying EasyJet out of Charles de Gaulle we had cabin crew with a familiar local accent. When a French passenger asked for a cup of coffe the stewardess didn’t even know the word for milk!

Anyway, back to the grind….

General