High-profile patriots
France wins in the yoghurt aisle
Dear Friend,
I hope you’ve had a good couple of weeks! If this is the first time you’re reading my letter, thank you — I’m delighted to have you here. And if you’ve been reading for a while, please accept my apologies for my missing a letter last Sunday. My excuse is that I had just had more-major-than-expected dental surgery and I was in pain/dozy. I’m doing better now!
In my last letter I spoke about how consumerism is so much more advanced in London than in Paris, notably in the way Christmas is expressed. I really enjoyed reading what friends wrote back in the comments and by email.
Rachel in London said:
“I’ve been enjoying your newsletter! So many relatable lols things about living in France. I’d never thought about how there were two different words for chestnuts!! Confiture de chataignes yet creme de marron; never questioned it! The only thing I did not agree on this week was choice in supermarkets. With the exception of vegetarian/vegan stuff, absolutely, there’s way more choice in French supermarkets! Think of the yogurt section
Then she came back a little later and said:
“Actually thinking about it - there’s probably more choice of different products in a British supermarket, but within an individual product e.g. yogurt, France wins”
The next day I had my dental appointment, which was more medieval than I’d prepared myself for. My dentist is over on the Left Bank and to cheer myself afterwards I went to look at the Christmas embellishments at Le Bon Marché department store and its legendary food hall, La Grande Epicerie. While there, I saw these yoghurts:
(By chance, I also started reading a book that I didn’t realise was actually about French supermarkets! So I will write a little more in the Thirty-second book club section.)
Andrew in Rutland disagreed with me that Paris was behind London in technological terms. He wrote this by email:
“When we were in Paris in October we thought getting around was better than London, particularly all the bikes you can pick up to go from A to B at a very low cost (8€/month?).
The Ubers we took in Paris were brilliant - usually EVs - one had an amazing sound system and played Francoise Hardy on request!
He refers to the Vélib bike rental scheme, which I love and which does only cost about 8€ per month, including electric bikes!
He also praised how Paris goes about its yuletide season.
“I think Christmas is overdone and comes too early in London. In this regard I think the Paris you describe is better. You are right about the Christmas food differences! We walked along Oxford Street recently and thought he shop window displays were uninviting.
Nothing can beat the beautiful buildings and streets of central Paris at any time of the year.”
I wrote about how to have a lovely festive time in Paris for The Telegraph, and you can see that article here. It is behind a paywall, I think. If you don’t have access, I can send you the full text if you ask me nicely!
An unlikely football pundit
Now of course all this kind and complimentary cross-Channel chat came before THE BIG MATCH. That is to say, the World Cup quarter final between England and France that took place last night., which England lost respectably and unspectacularly. For the last few days, I for one, have been enjoying leaning into the largely good-humoured rivalry between the two teams.
In normal times, I’m not really a Saint-George’s Cross kind of gal. Firstly, I don’t actually live in England, and my heritage is also a mixed bag. I rarely describe myself as English, preferring to declare the nationality on my passport – British, or the nationality of my heart – Londoner. And yet, every time there’s a major international football tournament, my latent inner nationalist appears.
I think growing up in the Nineties has something to do with it. During the World Cup, it’s like some deep-rooted body-memory is awakened and my brain swirls with, in no particular order: Baddiel and Skinner and Three Lions; those novelty Walkers Crisps flavours (Cheese and Owen, Salt and Linkear); Beckham’s sarong; football sticker albums; the Chumbawamba song from the FIFA Playstation game.
I pondered all this while writing a piece for The Times this week. It was my first print article for them and, more importantly, my dog Babbet’s debut on an international stage.
The day the article came out, I received an email from a producer at talkSPORT asking if I would like to appear on one of their afternoon shows to talk about the atmosphere in France before the match. I must admit that of all the directions I saw my career going in, none of them led to football punditry! But I also thought, pourquoi pas, and it seemed to go fine.
Thirty-second book club
At the start of 2022, I started a Google spreadsheet entitled ‘Books, delights and gifts 2022’. The first tab is a list of all the books I’ve read this year. I fill it in with a short commentary each time I finish one. The previous year I had started and not finished a lot of books and my idea was that having the accountability of the spreadsheet would help me see each read through. It has largely worked. I think the novel I have just finished reading, Booker-Prize-winning The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, which first came out in 1997, was my favourite novel of the year so far. It’s written with the kind of lyricism, richness and sheer play with language that can’t be taught or contrived. It’s sweet and heartbreaking, epic and small, all in one.
Staying on the theme of prize winning auteures, I am now reading ‘Regarde les lumières mon amour’ (‘Look at the lights, my love’) by Annie Ernaux, the 82-year-old French author who has just recently won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Despite the shopping trolley on the cover, I had not realised that this book is actually a lyrical study of the French supermarket. The author chronicles her trips to Auchan (a lower-cost supermarket chain, equivalent to maybe Asda?) in Cergy, a concrete-y suburb to the north-west of Paris.
I have written before in this newsletter about the suburbs of Paris. They look often like they belong in a different time to Paris (the current time) and are full of things like large supermarkets, warehouses, trucks and lorries, motorways— the things whose absence make Paris so distinctly charming, but which it nonetheless needs for its show to go on. I said this about Pantin, a traditionally ‘populaire’ (working-class) suburb just outside of Paris to the north.
“With its mix of old and modern, this neighbourhood feels in some ways more like London or New York than anywhere in central Paris. Here, and elsewhere too, what was once the industrial ‘backstage’ of the main event that was Haussmannian Paris is finding its own identity.”
I went back to Pantin recently to have lunch with my dear pal Myriam, who lives there and I felt this sentiment once more: that something really interesting is happening in these suburbs, the kind of fast change and innovation that quite physically couldn’t spread in central Paris the same way because of the particularities of its architecture and layout. In Pantin, we had lunch in the brutalist environs of the Centre Nationale de la Danse, a cultural centre that now houses a hip and very good café called Le Mingway. If you have time, I highly recommend going to see for yourself in order to get a fuller picture of Paris today. And reading Annie Ernaux! I’ll likely write more on her next week.
Thank you for reading my letter! If you haven’t already, please do click the button below and I’ll write to you every Sunday.
At the moment, I am working on some updates to a Paris travel guide for The Telegraph. If you have any restaurants, things to do, bars, museums etc etc. that you adore/ have just discovered, please let me know! You can email me on hannah@hannahmeltzer.com, or leave a comment.
I’ll write next Sunday, until then have a lovely week! And stay warm.
Yours,
Hannah
I really loved The God of Small Things. I read it about twenty years ago and still remember how devastated I felt by it.
Really interested in what you said about Pantin too, and of course I'm thinking about Clichy. You know I love Paris, but in some ways I feel it's a deceptive city, not entirely honest about its workings. I also found Edinburgh to be like that, when I lived there in the noughties: the bits that felt the most real were also the bits that were pushed out of sight. That's what makes both cities aesthetically special of course.
Relatedly, the first time I met Rod, we were wandering through Le Marais and there was a jazz trio busking on a corner. We stopped and I was gazing delightedly at them, listening, feeling very in love with the place, when Rod murmured 'This is not Paris, by the way.' Haha. And I guess he's right – it was about as Paris as the changing of the guard is London. Still great though!
Ahhh! Sunday is much nicer with your lovely pen pal in it Hannah! Salt and Lineaker!😂😂
France hammered us in the football ,oh dear! I remember the glory days of the 1966 world cup! Oft quoted and sung about in reverential joy... never repeated!
Love your Gen Z boy watercolour, actually, those of the Gen Z generation I have had the pleasure to meet, have been friendly . Open minded and charming. Ive always enjoyed how youngsters view the world. Poles apart from us old timers eh? Hope your teeth are better Hannah x