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In an interview with the Wall Street Journal this week, David Hockney announced he is moving to France. Enthusing about €13 lunches and claiming “the French know how to live”, Hockney expresses the traditional British belief that – with its charming village markets, sexy public intellectuals, endless cheese and lunchtime wine – France does things better.
As a fellow Francophile, I applaud his decision, but not his reasoning (his apparent belief that he can smoke in restaurants is wrong for a start). France is superior, but not because they don’t shed Pret crumbs over their keyboards. These are the real reasons.
TV news
Skip the first 10 minutes, a bore-fest of deferential presenters letting politicians drone on unchallenged. The remainder is an addictive insight into the minutiae of La France Profonde: cherrystone-spitting contests, the weight of school bags, or a crone whittling goat bells in the Massif-Central. In the summer, news is entirely replaced by interviewing holidaymakers on beaches and surveying traffic jams: slow TV at its finest.
Medical matters
A hypochondriac’s paradise, in France, there is no 8:01am pleading with intransigent receptionists or languishing in a pestilential walk-in clinic. You can see a doctor, even a specialist, whenever you like. And oh, the pharmacies. Those ubiquitous green crosses are a neon promise of in-depth ailment chat, good drugs and aisles of mad, pseudo-medical snake oil. I am obsessed with the French belief that “heavy legs” is a legitimate medical condition and pharmacies feed this collective delusion with herbs, gels, devices and suppositories. It’s far more fun than a Boots meal deal.
National anthem
By far the best national anthem of any country, La Marseillaise is bloodthirsty, rousing and utterly memorable, so much so that a Belgian prime minister confused it with his own country’s in 2007.
Workers’ rights
The 35-hour week and some of the highest levels of worker protection in Europe aside, a ruling by the Paris appeal court last week held that an employee who died on a work trip having sex with a stranger was the victim of a workplace accident. It is the kind of defence of workers’ rights that Brits can only dream of (President Félix Faure died in the arms of his mistress, so there’s probably residual sympathy for this kind of event).
Protest
French protest is the real deal: it is practically a baccalauréat subject, with everyone from pensioners to accountants giving 110%. I have watched my French husband’s mounting frustration at our feeble British protests in recent months with shame. “We need protesters blocking every roundabout, there should be a bonfire with sausages, 10:30 is a terrible time for a demo, no one is drunk yet, why aren’t these windows broken?” he laments, as someone gently waves an “Eton mess” placard, while we queue to sign another petition and a ‘Remain Choir’ warbles Bulgarian protest songs. He’s not wrong.
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