Les Sticks and Les Flics

Like most women, I am not obsessed with my weight.
I just think about it all the time.
I don't do much about it, admittedly, but I think about it.
And, happily, being completely indifferent to fashion, the resurgence of spray-on jeans has neither sparked any desire to be a la mode nor impinged on my physical comfort.

I don't suppose you have to be stick-thin to carry off the spray-on look, but I'm sure it helps.
Paris is stick thin.
I don't think I have ever seen so many wafer-women anywhere.
I don't know how they manage to walk about - some of them on sky-scraper heels as well.
How do they do it? And in Paris of all places, where every second shop is a boulangerie, and the ones in between sell wine or cheese, or chocolate, or some other epicurean delight.

When it came to our Essential Paris List, the In-Charge and I were as one.

'Matchsticks!' said I.
'Toothpicks!' said he, but then, 'Spaghettini,' he corrected himself.

We noticed it on our first day. Sitting in a cafe, the In-Charge suddenly said: 'There isn't a pick of flesh on that.'
The last time he'd said that was when we collected SuperModelTeenQueen from her foster home (and that was after three weeks of intensive feeding), so I turned, expecting to see a starving stray.
I suppose she could have been a starving stray, but her clothes didn't fit the bill, and she certainly wasn't either canine or feline.

We got quite competitive in the end.
'Her legs are thinner than the ones you saw yesterday!'
'There go the skinniest pins in Paris!'
We were too busy gawping to record the best of the super-mince, but one or two slipped through by accident.

 

Anyway, you don't want to be caught snapping girls' legs every time they totter past.
You might attract the wrong kind of attention.
You might be arrested. It could happen.
Les flics were very near the top of both our EP lists. We've never seen so many in our life.

Admittedly, we were staying close to the Ile de la Cite, upon which resides - apart from Notre Dame - the Prefecture de Police, so we knew instantly if anything was going down in any quartier of the city, as fleets of vans stuffed with armed officers would go screaming out, sirens wailing, regardless of the snarled up traffic they left in their wake.

We went to Giverny one Sunday, and when we got off the train at Gare St Lazare on our return, it was to find the area around the Opera closed off, and phalanxes of cops in riot gear lining the streets, shoulder to shoulder.
Excitement, excitement!

Don't you love the irony? Or perhaps not - are they, like Irish Gards, just guardians of the peace...

I immediately ducked behind one of their riot shields to ask what was happening, and found that we had missed a massive manifestation, during which, apparently, 1,000,000 people from all over France had gathered in Paris to protest against the legalisation of gay marriage.

The French, as everyone knows, are always ready to storm the barricades, take to the streets, blockade ports with trucks or find some way of making their feelings known.
Good for the French.
And shame on us for being too apathetic for follow suit.

The police are everywhere in Paris. They are present, in van-loads, at any disturbance, they are on foot, on motorbikes, on rollerblades, on horseback. They are in mufti, they are in uniform, they are in riot gear and   you are definitely going to come off worst in any encounter with their protective clothing.
And, of course, they are armed.
But equally Paris is also full of buskers, beggars, illegal traders and more - none of whom look harassed.
Being a law-abiding tourist with no axe to grind, I don't have an opinion about either police numbers or presence, but I found myself wondering how the French feel. Secure or scrutinised?

One of the funniest moments of our holiday happened in the Tourist Office near Pyramides.
While waiting for a leaflet at the desk, I overheard an elderly American woman talking to the official at the next desk.
'Well,' she said, waving her arms expressively. 'I don't know about that. All I can say is, I'd feel much happier if there were more police on the street!'


We burst into laughter and had to leave immediately.
But for the rest of our stay, one of us only had to say: 'Well, all I can say is, I'd be happier...'

The Property Tax is a Riot

After we'd looked at what the Market had to offer yesterday, some friends and I sat in its nicely old-fashioned cafe and had a cuppa, and the talk, as so often nowadays, turned to the situation in Ireland. Someone mentioned the new property tax.

The Market has lots of good things on offer. Like these...

Now I should explain that we have no council charges, domestic rates, property taxes or whatever they are called in other parts of the world. I have even heard it said that 'rates' is a swear word in Ireland, a hark-back to the bad old days of the British. Fair enough.

I have even heard it said that 'promises were made' that such an evil would never be re-introduced.

Hmm.

(Perhaps it was a Government that made that promise. Enough said.)

and these...

The new Property Tax is going to be a hundred euros per household.
Well - this year, anyway.
Once they have managed to make the country swallow the idea that rates (that old swear word) are indeed on the annual menu, then I suppose the sky's the limit. 

I guess you may all be gasping with amazement that we don't have a local taxes of some kind, but we're not getting away Scot free. Ireland is an expensive place to live, everything seems to be loaded, one way or another and we have a high rate of VAT, high road tax, income tax, some people pay water rates (soon everyone will pay water rates) and so it goes on... And if you want your rubbish collected (what else can you do with it in a country where bonfires are illegal?) you pay a private company...

Back at the table yesterday, someone voiced the opinion that the new tax was illegal. Someone else said you couldn't be forced to register for it. Only one person said they didn't mind paying, as the government needs the money - how else can it claw back the gazillions Ireland owes?
Another person said 'But it's not my debt!'

I'd have to agree with that one.

and these...

We then got on to discussing all the side issues - corruption, the lack of justice being meted out to the wankers, sorry - bankers who caused all the problems in the first place, the bonuses still being paid by the banking sector 'so that we can continue to attract the right kind of employees'.
Yeah. Right.
That really worked last time.



And the fact that the Irish secretly admire a chancer, someone who flouts the system and gets away with it. Lots of 'chancers' in positions of authority here.
It comes, one person said, from all the years of trying to get one over on the British.
Very true. But as she pointed out, now they are getting one over on themselves.
Not such a result perhaps.

and these soaps...

We discussed the current gloom and doom in the country and the sorry fact that the economy is flatter than last weeks pancakes.

It was what we didn't discuss that I found myself thinking about afterwards.
We didn't discuss standing up and shouting about it.
Or marching, or fighting back.
Or even having a jolly good riot. Riots seem popular in other places.
Riots, it seems to me, come about when people don't think they are being heard.
But you have to say something for there to be any chance of being heard.
Is anyone in Ireland shouting?

For shouting to be effective, it needs to start somewhere and grow.
Maybe the Property Tax would be a good starting point.
Why it needs to be levied in the first place.
We've all given up dreaming that with all the bank debt ladled onto Everyman's shoulders, there would be some kind of moratorium on mortgages, but at the very least everyone who pays the Property Tax ought to get the same amount knocked off their mortgage bill.
That's something else we could shout about.

We refilled our cups and the chat moved on to other things.

not to mention these samosas and goat's cheese tartlets...

And now I am wondering. Is it just my perception, or is that the problem?
In Ireland we love sitting around a table with a cuppa, chewing the fat.
We can do that for an Olympic Gold.
We're not given to shouting enough.
And I can't see a riot taking place.
Shame.

So I guess we're all just going to pay.
And pay.
And pay.

and locally made cards and crafts....  It's a very good Market!