One Sunday last September, I sat at a table outside one of Lyon’s famous traditional “bouchon” restaurants, eating a sumptuous prix-fixe lunch, as the heavens opened and a small monsoon pounded the cobbles around me and the parasol above my head. The waiter asked if I wanted to move inside. I demurred; as long as my andouillette and I were still largely dry, I was enjoying the people-watching and the view of the pretty, sand-coloured buildings too much to worry about a few stray drops. If a bit of rain didn’t put me and my fellow diners off, why should many parts of the infamously cloudy UK be so opposed to the notion? In fact, London has less annual rainfall than Rome, Paris or Vienna.
Foremost among the stories we tell about ourselves as a nation is that we do things differently to those carefree continentals. There is a reason we have had to take – and mistranslate – the term “alfresco” from the Italians and “flâneur” from the French (dawdler), and are still ignoring the Spanish “sobremesa” (after-dinner socialising around the table) and “paseo” (an early-evening stroll) – because we have often been a private, lonely bunch compared with our neighbours across the Channel. You will be familiar with the trope: an Englishman’s home is his castle and, given that the moat is maintained by Britain’s private water companies, it is probably safest if we shelter indoors until the worst has passed.
