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.
