If it is a cliche to be a Francophile — and it is — there is also a long, undeniable list of things that les Francais just do better. Food, obviously; wine, of course; weather, in much of the country. They are enlightened on worker’s rights, and I have never heard a British person be described as ‘gamine’, except as a sort of cruel joke after a poor haircut (thanks, sis). But in this très long list one thing sticks out, and it is not culture or cuisine nor even their innate chic. It is — bien sûr! — the fact that they don’t work in August.
Ask a Parisian to do something productive in August? Suggest a meeting, schedule a performance review, even send one an email? Pah! How they will laugh, sending Gauloises smoke up your nostrils in the process. Come August 1 — at the very latest — and the collective OOO is on; the city is demob happy. They get in their cars and onto their TGVs and they just vanish, returning in September after a summer of topless St Tropez days and long, indolent evenings sinking bottles of wine around a citronella candle. So far, so nirvana — or at the very least a happy version of a Françoise Sagan novel.
But in this first proper post-Covid summer, it also sounds nothing short of expedient. Summer 2022 is a maelstrom, mayhem, diary-ageddon, stacked full of postponed weddings and hen dos; of festivals and real life and holidays abroad, assuming your lumbar spine can handle sleeping on the floor of Terminal 5 for three days. In my 20s, sleep was for the dead; at 32, I am dead without it. Persecuted by my despotic Filofax/iCal, I have become monstrous, the kind of person who tells my best friend I ‘might’ be able to see her for coffee in September. She replied, saying October might be more realistic.
If something has to give — why not work? Forsaking sticky commutes in stifling Tube carriages, no more pass-agg OOOs or pushy deadlines that make your brow bead with sweat. Plus, you wouldn’t just have to use your free month to attend weddings, or go to the pub. You could use it to do all those things that need doing but never want to waste a weekend completing. Cleaning your loo; dusting under the sofa; getting the grime out of the grouting on your bathroom floor (just me?); changing energy providers... Honestly, I reckon there are lightbulbs in my flat that blew before Brexit. No one wants to spend Saturday doing admin or housework, obviously. But a random Wednesday in August, when you know you can go for a cider by the canal after you’ve finished? Now we’re talking.
What I am imagining is a sort of collective, voluntary furlough (no, I haven’t costed it up yet — this is blue sky thinking!). No one has to feel guilty about skiving off because everyone is skiving off, just like the French. No wonder they are chicer than us — they have a whole month of languid living to enjoy, to let their souls recharge. Can you imagine the freedom? Workers of London unite — we have nothing to lose but our chain emails.
In other news...
Surely I cannot be the only one fascinated by the Wimbledon seating arrangements of hot couples Sienna Miller, below, and Oli Green, and Alexa Chung and Tom Sturridge? Sturridge and Miller dated for a few years and co-parent their daughter, Marlowe; there they were sitting happily together this weekend, each couple snogging, the four of them doing a selfie together. So enlightened! So mature!
I am in an extended friendship group with a long-term ex; despite breaking up about a thousand years ago, we are both so awkward with one another we can barely look each other in the eye, let alone be in a picture together. Where was the animosity, the resentment, the desire for the ground to swallow you up? Perhaps stardom inures you from such civilian matters as romantic awkwardness; another reason to be envious of the lives of the rich and famous.
