Back in France, Part 2

by Glenn N. Holliman

My friend and frequent correspondent has returned to France from his winter sojourn in Florida.  Here are a few of his latest encounters with French culture and the battle of the belt of which many of us engage. - GNH

Pumping iron
by Terry Field

This time last year my return to the reality of rural France, replete with challenges undesired induced introspection, laced with the particular stresses the life of a step-parent – well anyway this step-parent – is required to endure.

The consequence was an indulgence in comfort-eating, and in Normandy that means the product of both the cow and of the ear of wheat.

Parisian  display of Argentine beef

Thus I grew to resemble a mini-Michelin man (for those of you of a certain age the picture will be unwholesome), yet lacking the vacuous smile.  Add into the mix a decline in required hormones as the age bit, and the central belt made up for the newly puny little arms.

Oh dear.

Right, pastries near Avenue Foch in Paris

Reversing this will be tough. My enthusiasm for recovering an element of my waistline was however boosted by the comments of a French tailor close by the Avenue Foch in good old friendly (?) Paris.

I entered his shop, closely followed by my wife to inquire of the possibility of his making me a suit, slacks and a jacket.

The tailor is possessed of a ‘beak’ almost as long as the previously mentioned heron, and sharp eyes that focus immediately upon the part of me that approximates to that on the world between Capricorn and Cancer.

His jaw stiffens. I ask him the likely price and time to make.

In translation, I report here that he refuses to accommodate my requests.

‘I refuse’ he says, hands glued to the cutting table as if to accent the statement.

Below Terry considers Gallic concerns!

‘You are deformed’ he tells me.

‘And you, Madame, are to blame!’. He projects a Gallic dart of utter contempt to Fina who is hiding by the entrance, which would wither a person made of weaker stuff.

Fina's offering from her Normandy chateau

Not to be put off, and challenged by his assertions, I ask ‘what must I do’ (not to be ‘saved’, although the horror of it all seemed to take on a religious dimension), but rather to be ‘dressed’ ?

‘Return to your home, consume only a light potage every evening before six in the evening, then, appropriately ‘reduced’, return, I will assess you, and if satisfactory, I will suit you sir’.

I am walking on air. I have gained motivation, laced with the agreeable surprise of where it has come from. A tailor has identified my condition with a rapier like precision no quack could begin to match.

In a socialized medical system, there would be offered a weary contempt and disdain.

In any medical world, The Possessor of All Relevant Knowledge ( aka ‘the doctor’) in such a ‘socialised healthcare’ system would say something along the lines of

‘You need to follow a balanced diet, refrain from eating too much of the wrong sort of thing, and perhaps you may thus defer experiencing a myocardial infarction; although as a man you do realize the fat on your midriff constitutes in effect another organ, and it send signals to you heart that will undoubtedly result in a shortening of your lifespan. Women seem to be able to tolerate midriff fat. Strange that, do you not find?’

What does he mean?

Nobody knows?

When do I start and what do I do? How do I check I am on the right lines? What is right for me? Any guidance available?

Silence reigns. Why? He has gone into at least three other cubicles and delivered the same valueless platitudes to three other tubbies in the time it takes me to put trousers and shirt on and tried to put some intelligent responses together.

I never see him again.

3.25 minutes per patient.

That’s your lot. Socialised medicine, underfunded. Great in the First World, isn’t it!!

The ‘Private Insurance Based experience’

Were one to approach a doctor in a private insurance-based ‘healthcare’ system for the equivalent experience, and having completed the five-page in depth life-history medico-legally compliant data record required to get over the threshold of the cardiologist’s office-suite, the conversation could well run along the following lines.

“Well Mr. Field, welcome! Great to see you.

I read that you would like to work with me to further optimise your bio-functions and make sure that every day is a great day for you and your family! I am SO pleased we were able to schedule the tests we offered you and I am SO EXCITED to be able to tell you the great results we found and all the work we can do together both today and in the months and years ahead to make sure you keep firing on all cardiological cylinders! 

Be assured, we have a five year program of work I will run past the insurance company you gave me last week and if they are happy we will start right away! We plan to optimize the calcium score in you cardio vascular system, ensure an enduring low-hypoglycemic index nutritional ingestion experience, body sculpt and cryo-freeze your superficial excess fatty deposits, (challenging, in a positive way of course, but we can ‘get there’) and have you work on a cardio exercise program at the Health and Exercise Centre I happen to be a part owner of, (together with my fourth ex-wife, it’s in trust, - no need to worry, she is co-operative) thus I can GUARANTEE you a personally rejuvenating vascular experience that will leave you ready for our long-term CARDIO SUMIT  program, designed to ensure you gain and maintain a fully functioning blood supply to even the most remote, hard to reach and struggling cells in your body, which in your case are, at the moment, just about all of them and everywhere!”

So all in all it’s best to be told you are a reprehensible fat slob by a French tailor in a small tailors shop just near the Avenue Foch, Paris, France.

It is optimally motivating.

My workouts, lunchtime green salads and black coffee are rooted in the vocal cords of this thin assertive little froggie.

So I say THANK YOU!! Merci Mon Brave!

Back in France, Part 1

by Glenn N. Holliman

Our frequent commentator on human affairs, Terry Field of both Florida and France, has returned to his chateau in Normandy.  While in transport from Ft. Lauderdale on a luxury cruise ship, he began to write.  Here is the first of his musings.  - GNH

A Note on Board

by Terry Field

Well, six months passes with the certain pace that time spent in an ageing frame allows to be experienced.

My ‘publisher’ has suggested that I pen a note on my thoughts and experiences of the last few months spent in balmy climes, far south of the rigors of the melting arctic and its revenge on Europe. This was an unwelcome task since I was and am in a dolorous frame of mind, and dwelling upon the reasons is not to be relished. Yet the task is done, and the offering made in this little series of notes by way of observation and occasional conclusion.

As things are now

I am floating like wobbling jelly across a still-warm sea between Florida and the Azores, aboard a gigantic American cruise ship. On the top deck, defying appropriateness is a lawn – not astra-turf – a real lawn, and upon it a white heron has landed, and stands uncertainly. I have seen her follow the ship, circling and keening for a home now irretrievably lost.   She is a Floridian; pure and fine, snowy white, yellow-beaked, feather-tailed, tall and erect on long black legs and broad feet. She is plainly very tired; wings drop immediately on landing and she walks uncertainly as the ship sways.

Below, on land and not sea, Terry photographs 

an avian species at his Florida home.

I approach a steward ‘ Have you any fish? Uncooked?’

‘Yes sir, sea bass or bream?’

‘The heron will not care; sea bass may be better’.

The fish duly arrives, sliced on a platter. I offer the bird some small pieces, dropping them on the lawn in front of the bird. She looks uncertain, moves forward, pecks at the fish with a rapier-like beak, but leaves it alone. The bird seems perplexed, but beyond eating. I suspect she has not eaten for five days and therefore has not taken fluids. Time is running out for her.

Her world has disappeared, hidden by the horizon; she is alone, landed in a place only made for men. For her, the lawn constitutes a fraud; she expects to drive her beak deep and retrieve a beetle or grub, yet one inch down is the steel plate of the deck.

Most people mill around, uncomprehending. This bird’s life is ebbing away yet none seem to see it.

I do not expect to see her alive this time tomorrow.

I am struck that we are doing a similar thing on a broader canvas. To ourselves. We travel both individually and as a species far from the time and condition of our points of origin, from the world that we were made by and for. 

Like this white heron, we travel out of sight of where we knew we could be ourselves, where everything was just right for our needs, before we discovered the thought and language of ‘wants’.

Now we are all in a strange world, made by us, yet not in any sense one that really meets our ‘needs’.

All reports suggest that we will soon find ourselves in a world as harsh and unsupportive of us as the heron found the turf on the top deck of this cruise ship.

Perhaps you caught that the last sentence refers to climate change on going around this fragile planet.  

Next article, Terry approaches a Parisian tailor and realizes he is back in France! - GNH