French Lessons

Today marks the beginning of the first of four elongated school holidays in the French academic year.  The excuse for a break is pinned on Toussaint (“All Saints Day”), the November 1^st holiday during which the French decorate their deceased relatives’ graves with flowers.

 

For Côte d’Azur school children, observation of the day merits a full week-and-a-half off school.

 

Which means that we will have a full week-and-a-half off real life at Bellevue as well.  “French Lessons” will continue around the time that, just over the Channel, the Brits are burning effigies of Guy Fawkes. 

Francois' Law

Some people call it Murphy’s Law.

 

‘Round here, it must be called François’ Law, or something similarly French.  Not only do things break – a topic we’ve gone over countless times in this blog – but they break with a perfectly imperfect sense of timing.

 

Earlier this year it was the air-conditioning, giving up its ghost one Friday afternoon in mid-August (the steamy month during which no one works in France), precisely while we entertained a houseful of guests.

 

Then it was a leak in the roof that managed to flood our family’s empty suitcases – just as we were ready to pack them.

 

Now it is a guest that has broken.  And while this particular story doesn’t yield any insights to the fragility of French construction, it does provide quite a nifty glimpse into the area’s emergency medical services.

 

French medicine was an obvious topic around Bellevue last week.  Among our roster of visitors was Petra, a Finnish pediatric nurse who was four months’ pregnant; Pierre’s brother Jean, a retired, Quebecois surgeon who proclaims the benefits of garlic and all things organic; and Jean’s wife Ginette, a practicing nurse in Quebec. 

 

And who doesn’t have medical stories to tell?  Mingling with the real medics’ words were my American mother’s anecdotes of the US’s much-debated health care system; views of Britain’s National Health Service from Michael, Petra’s English husband; and lessons learned from Pierre and my current navigation of France’s relatively paternal scheme. 

 

It’s hardly surprising that medicine made for, er, healthy conversation.

 

All these folks – bar my American mother – maneuvered rather social medical regimes.  Putting some numbers on our represented countries, the World Health Organization’s most recent comparisons show that general government expenditure represented somewhere between 70 and 80% of total expenditure on health during 2005 in Canada, Finland and France.  In the UK the figure was as high as 87%.  The US Government’s share in its citizens’ health care that year?  45%.

 

It is the stuff that spurs conversation.

 

One lunchtime, for example, our northern congress of the UN discussed pharmacies.  OTC drugs are for the grabbing in the US at Walgreens and in grocery store aisles.  The Canadians have Shoppers Drug Mart.  The Brits have Boots. 

 

In France, even to purchase a simple packet of throat lozenges, I must visit a pharmacy that’s designated by the appropriate big, green, first aid cross.  There are no shopping carts available in these French pharmacies.  There is, in fact, hardly any room for carts in these little shops that seem to scream at their customers, “Look, but never – ever – touch!” 

 

All this to say that health was hardly a foreign topic to our entourage.  And thus we were ripe for a real, first-hand, French encounter.

 

Pregnant women, I knew, were at risk to many things.  With the visit of Petra, our willowy (but for her four-month bulge), Finnish friend, I washed vegetables especially carefully.  I cooked chicken particularly thoroughly.  I prayed that three-and-a-half-year old Laurelle would leave the school’s rampant gastro bug at school.

 

She didn’t.

 

Happily Petra didn’t succumb to the local pre-school’s super gastro.  But travel is tough on bodies, particularly pregnant ones.  On Saturday night, at the good hour of 9:30 pm – impeccably timed to coincide with la Côte d’Azur’s big night out, not to mention two days’ air travel that would begin for Petra and Michael early the next morning – our household learned that something was ailing Petra.  Something female and more private than a gastro super-bug.  Something that, given her pregnant state, had to be taken care of with urgency.  And definitely before tomorrow morning’s flight.

 

The medical community in our household, including the now-weepy Petra, agreed that this patient would be fine as long as she got the right pills.  For these pills, however, she needed a prescription.  A French prescription.

 

I am prepared for things like this.  I am a mother.  I have German roots.  I hardwire emergency contact numbers into my mobile phone’s SIM card. 

 

I whipped out a list of medical and emergency telephone numbers that I keep in my all-important kitchen drawer.  Pierre’s first-tongue French did the talking, and my German industriousness did the paper-based walking. 

 

First call:  Dr. Laurent, our kindly and ever-watchful GP. 

 

No surprises, the good doctor wasn’t in his cabinet on Saturday night.  Our call also failed to forward onto his home as it sometimes does.  (When Dr. Laurent does pick up at home, I always fear it’s a grand intrusion on his privacy, but I’m jolly glad to hear his voice.  Even if he’s wearing slippers.)

 

On Saturday night Dr. Laurent’s mobile phone also went to messages.

 

Next try?  The number I’d jotted down for instances when Dr. Laurent was unavailable.  A recorded French telephone lady explained with firmness, “Le numéro n’est pas attribué.”  Wrong number.

 

Knowing that French law requires one area pharmacy to remain open through the night, I called our two locals – just in case one was open and the pharmacien-cum-médecin was in.  They weren’t and he wasn’t.

 

Another local telephone number on my emergency list (that is, NOT a scary two-digit one that summons the police, ambulance or firemen) was entitled “Ambulance 24H/24.”  It looked promising without pricking the sirens.  Le numéro n’est pas attribute.

 

Next on my list:  Hôpital de la Fontonne.  Le numéro n’est pas attribute.

 

I was beginning to feel very un-German.

 

The yellow pages came to my rescue.  L’Hôpital de la Fontonne’s switchboard operator put us through to an operator for les urgences.  He advised that their emergency room was heaped.  Best not to come in until at least 11:00 pm.  Why not try the hospital in Mougins?  Or Cannes?  Or, he suggested, what about phoning SAMU?

 

SAMU stands for “le Service d’Aide Médicale Urgente.”  It’s France’s ambulance service.  SAMU has a scary two-digit telephone number.

 

Dialing “18” was a wrong number.  The call connected us with SAMU Nice.  We don’t live in Nice. 

 

The kind folks at SAMU Nice re-directed us to SAMU Antibes. 

 

SAMU Antibes, yes, could send around an ambulance.  We hesitated.  Whirling sirens seemed a bit extreme for Petra’s condition.  The operator at SAMU Antibes made a few other suggestions.  Why not try Hôpital Saint Roche in Nice?  They could offer a private doctor with no wait and an open pharmacy next door. 

 

Enticing, but Nice – as we had just been saying – was not exactly next door to us.  A definite maybe.  We took the number.

 

What about SOS Médecins?  The operator at SAMU Antibes explained that the service sends a doctor-on-call to your doorstep.  She gave us another number.

 

Okay, another definite maybe, but a doctor-on-call could only provide the feted prescription.  What about a pharmacy to dole out the pills on Saturday night?  Which is Antibes’ 24-hour pharmacie du jour? 

 

We could find out, our contact explained, by calling yet another number.  We scrawled these digits on our increasingly dogeared page of urgent telephone numbers and rung off with SAMU Antibes.

 

Hello, Hôpital Saint Roche?  You’re for real?  You actually have NO wait?  Great.  You’re where exactly?  Okay, maybe we’ll be in. 

 

We rang off and did the drive-time calculations.  We decided to make one more call. 

 

And so, a full 12 phone calls after our “emergency procedure” began, we spoke with the operator at SOS Médecins.  She declared that, yes, a doctor who would be on our doorstep within an hour.

 

In the flurry of the moment, we didn’t take time to reflect how amazing this fact was.  That here in Antibes, in the middle of la Côte d’Azur on a Saturday night, there was a medical doctor who, for a EUR 100 fee, happily would make house visits to see someone who wasn’t dying. 

 

And it was a good thing no one was dying given the time it took us to find this saint. 

 

As Jean, our own, in-house physician, said, “Now that’s first-class service.  You’d never get a doctor in your home on Saturday night in Quebec.”  What’s more, our Finnish guests even would have a moment to pack their suitcases before the doorbell rang.

 

To underscore the eminence of France’s medical system, I have since done a small bit of research.  What I discovered was blatantly straightforward:  When the WHO assessed the world health care system in 2000, it found that France provided the “best overall health care” in the world. 

 

It’s a fairly decent summary of the situation – as long as you know where to find the goods.

 

But we could not yet celebrate France’s health care.  The SOS Médecins doctor would provide Petra’s pivotal prescription, but where was the open pharmacy? 

 

Pierre made his thirteenth phone call.  He dialed the last number that SAMU Antibes had provided, the Antibes pharmacy hotline.

 

He got the local police station.  Could they tell us which pharmacy was open through the night?

 

No, not exactly, the officer told us.  We had to physically bring our hot, new prescription into the police station on Avenue des Frères Olivier in downtown Antibes.  After inspecting the paper, the on-duty fonctionnier would tell us where to go to get the prescription filled.

 

This is one way that France looks after its unemployment figures.

 

Et voilà, at 10:30 p.m. on Saturday night, a short, smiling doctor with combed-over brown hair arrived at Bellevue.  As he and Petra headed into a quiet room, I was summoned as translator – a scary mandate for a French student who is supposed to negotiate pills for a pregnant woman.  Fortunately the doctor spoke some English and Petra some French, which meant they only needed me for the more involved parts of the conversation, which is exactly when I felt inept.

 

Petra-the-nurse had self-diagnosed correctly.  Yes, for purposes of full disclosure, she admitted to a mild gastro from Laurelle earlier in the day.  But that was of no importance.  Petra soon had a couple pills to take her through the next morning.  She also had an all-important, written prescription for more.

 

The cool-headed doctor discouraged us from filling the prescription that night.  “C’est compliqué,” he said, brushing off the police station – all-night pharmacy two-step.  (That’s not all that has been compliqué, I thought.)  He recommended that Petra head to the pharmacy at the airport in the morning. 

 

Which is exactly what she chose to do.  And I’m happy to report that, Sunday morning and all, Petra got her pills, and life continued as normal for her and her fetus.

 

But not so for most everyone else associated with Bellevue.

 

Within a day of Petra and Michael’s departure, Pierre succumbed to the pre-school’s gastro super-bug. 

 

So did Ginette, our nurse in continuing residence from Quebec.  

 

So did Jennifer, our nanny, with all the downstream scheduling side effects. 

 

So did my mother, who departed Bellevue the same morning as Petra and Michael did, and who feared her in-flight behavior would cause the entire passenger roster on her transatlantic flight to be quarantined.

 

So did Michael, Petra’s husband, once he touched down in Finland two days later. 

 

Laurelle, original carrier of the super-bug, bounces on with life as normal.  Her gastro a long-lost memory, she now engages me, her dutiful, German-seeded mother, in Chapter Two of The Epic Adventures of Pre-School Maladies. 

 

With our bags nearly packed for another family adventure – setting up a new opportunity for the perfectly imperfect timing of Francois’ Law – I pound Antibes’ streets.  I engage the city’s daytime pharmaciens. 

 

I’m hoping against all hopes that, with the right potions and lotions, Laurelle won’t bring home the super-bug that reigned in her pre-school class this week.  Lice. 

Round and Round

There’s no surer sign that one’s skill is improving in some arena than when he begins to question his own competence in that sphere.

 

Plato, or another one of the greats, surely said it more eloquently.  Probably in six words or less.  But I swear this idea, clumsily presented here, must count as one of life’s great truths.

 

I remember when my age consisted of a single digit, and I sat on my bedroom floor reflecting on a flurry of seemingly horrid news delivered by the TV’s talking head.  If I just had a couple hours to spare, I’d thought while staring at the avocado-colored shag, I could work out all the ills that plagued President Nixon and his crew.

 

Now my age is well removed from single digits.  The news is overwhelmingly sour, and I haven’t a clue where one begins in sorting it all out.

 

But I have at least studied economics.  And I do know what a negative number is.

 

Life’s great truth is abundantly evident for me on this side of the Water, too.  Take the French language.  Francophone friends constantly tell me how my communication skills have improved in the last year.  Meanwhile, and with some regularity, my tongue ties itself as I speak and I’m forced to revert to a Stone Age point-and-show charade.

 

Equally irksome is French driving.  During our earliest stays in France, I flat out refused to join la Côte d’Azur’s Formula One racing track.  Then I put my mind to it, put my pedal to the metal and my heart in my throat, and I got around fairly decently.  I squeezed through pinholes.  I humped curbs to park.  I screeched toward upside-down, red-and-white triangular signs saying “Cedez le Passage,” yielding to oncoming traffic only if my life depended on it.  I refused to give up my right-of-way when, at least according to the French way of thinking, it was mine to keep.

 

Put into horridly sexist terms, I refused to be the “woman driver” that Pierre rebukes around town. 

 

A couple days ago my dear husband was admonishing an indecisive, lane-swerving driver along the A8 tollway.  As we cruised past her maroon sedan, I quickly pointed out that she was, in fact, a MAN. 

 

Michael, our English visitor from Finland, occupied the front passenger seat.  He offered a quick retort.  “Yes, he’s a man,” Michael said.  “But there are female male drivers, you know.”

 

Squashed in the back seat with two other women, I said something about being a man myself.  But in that instant, of course, I unwittingly ratified Michael’s use of the word “female.”

 

My driving successes in France – if they can be called that; at least I’ve managed to get quite regularly between points A and B without a pile of traffic tickets – stem largely from a decade of driving in London (adjusted in obvious ways to accommodate France’s right-handed traffic principles).  Also critical has been my adoption of Pierre’s Number One Traffic Rule:  He Who Flinches, Loses. 

 

Not that a driver should break French traffic regulations.  But if another motorist looks as though he may not be quite as fluent in the language of traffic as you are, just be sure that he’s the one looking at your taillights, and not the other way around.

 

Just as my taillights have gained regular audiences in the area, though, my appreciation of French driving principles has gone the way of the country’s language.  It’s all got a bit tougher.  I worry whether I’ve been an obnoxious, male female driver around town. 

 

My awakening, of course, had to do with that most vexing arena in world of traffic.  Roundabouts.

 

Unlike much of the US, European streets are littered with these hub-and-spoke-shaped monsters.  Easily enough, I summoned my London driving days and applied these rules to the French rondpoint.  If a car is driving within the center of a rondpoint, I told myself, that vehicle has the right of way.  I only can enter a rondpoint when there is space available for my car. 

 

There was, of course, only one minor difference to remember while navigating these hub-and-spoke behemoths, and that was to execute the circle in a counter-clockwise manner.  But as I say, it’s a minor point.

 

My British rules worked fairly well.  Sure, every now and then – and oddly enough, often in the same couple rondpoints – a car already within the center would stop to allow me, the incoming driver, to enter the circus.

 

Weird.

 

Obviously a woman driver.  Or a female male one. 

 

But there was no reason at all for me to adjust my driving technique in the face of these daftly polite folks.

 

Until the other night I dined with a visiting Canadian friend Monica and her local French friends Micheline and Maurice.  Monica offered into conversation that the scariest thing about living in France must be the driving.  And specifically, the scariest of all scary driving things must be des rondpoints.

 

Not so, I boasted.  All you have to do is apply London rules and turn the opposite direction.

 

“Non, non,” Micheline and Maurice countered.

 

And thus, just like my command of the French language, I saw my grasp of the French road system shriveling back to its infancy.

 

The French rule?  “C’est simple,” Micheline and Maurice explained.  All I have to do is apply the broader French principle for intersections:  He Who Enters On The Right Has The Right-Of-Way.

 

Which, of course, makes no sense whatsoever to an England-educated driver who is driving in France. 

 

As one spins around rondpoints here in a counter-clockwise manner, the driver who enters a rondpoint ALWAYS does so on the right.  By this crazy French rule, the incoming driver ALWAYS has the right of way.  Which means that traffic could just come to one, massive, screeching standstill within the rondpoint, forever and ever, without end, because no one has the right to budge.  Traffic – a word translated rather enticingly by the French as la circulation – would just plain fail to circulate.

 

Which may actually explain quite a lot about French circulation.

 

But it’s not that simple, Micheline and Maurice countered.  The right-hand right-of-way works only when a driver is approaching a rondpoint that DOESN’T have one of those upside-down, triangular signs saying “Cedez le Passage.”  In other words, when the driver IS asked to yield, he gives right-of-way to traffic already within the rondpoint.  

 

Bigger rondpoints, the French couple further explained, likely would instruct drivers to yield.

 

Bigger rondpoints, I silently interpreted, are simply British. 

 

Which is all just dandy, until you find yourself behind the wheel of a car and, wishing to drive in France like a Frenchman (and here I specifically use the masculine form of the word), you attempt to put the big-versus-little rondpoint differentiation into practice.

 

The biggest problem, I now find, is trying to work out how one behaves WITHIN a rondpoint.  I always enter it based on the British, yield-first principle.  Safety first.  But then, once twirling around its nucleus, I realize that I’ve not actually glimpsed whether this rondpoint is a British-form, “Cedez le Passage” sign-bearing one, or the French type where he-who-enters-on-the-right has right-of-way.  That poses a problem:  How do I behave toward other incoming vehicles? 

 

Circling the pavement, do I just do the male thing and ignore other drivers wishing to enter on my right?  Or do I come to a halt within the rondpoint and courteously (and possibly correctly) allow some new car to enter the circle on my right?

 

At first I was hung up by my constant failure to observe simple signposts.  How could I have missed a blazing, red-and-white sign?  Then I realized that, often times, there was no chance to spot a “Cedez le Passage” marker, if it existed at all. 

 

Looking back – which is hardly an advisable thing to do mid-rondpoint – I began to notice that the sign might be hidden behind an immense, flowering bush.  More likely, the culprit was a delivery van, illegally hitched up on a curb at the rondpoint’s mouth, blocking entirely from view the space where an all-important sign may or may not exist.

 

In the days immediately following Micheline and Maurice’s driving revelation, I formed my own, new driving principle:  Follow The Car In Front Of You.  Which works perfectly well, as long as the car in front is headed where you are.

 

Then I simply decided to follow Micheline’s ultimate suggestion.  I would drive with blinders on.  I would stomach the idea that occupying the French road network is a gut-feel, heart-in-the-throat practice.   

 

Put more emphatically, I would ingest the fact that – just as with the wretched language – I basically know nothing about France.

 

Perhaps I will just rest within Bellevue’s walls until I get smart again.

It's a Doggone World

Walking the streets of Antibes, you’d be forgiven for not knowing that the world is falling into une crise planétaire, as the French would put it.

 

Roman Abramovich’s magnificent, 377-foot “Pelorus“ megayacht is moored off the coastline this week. 

 

An estate agent – keeping on the Russian theme – buzzed Bellevue’s gate a couple days ago to see whether we were interested in selling our house.  She explained she has an eager Russian client.  We explained we are not eager. 

 

Even the junk that flies into our mailbox is telling.  A recent flyer proclaimed “Avion à Prendre!”  Airplane to Take!  Call, I’ll drive you!  

 

No, in this yacht-owning, airplane-chartering, real-estate scooping wedge of France, one almost could overlook the fact that we’re in the midst of financial Armageddon as the Dow endures its largest-ever tumbles, once-mighty banks are being scooped up by mightier ones and their governments, and the world’s politicians are taking crash courses in counterparty risk and credit default swaps. 

 

Admittedly, newsagents in the Southern Circus do offer copies of the big, international newspapers, so we do actually know what’s going on in the real world.  But our own daily Nice Matin has sold copies with recent banner headlines akin to:

 

“WHERE CAN YOU PARK IN NICE FOR FREE?  MAPS INSIDE!”

 

and

 

“SEA URCHINS:  THE COMPLETE GUIDE ABOUT WHERE TO FISH

AND HOW TO CHOOSE THE GOOD ONES”

 

I kid you not.

 

My favorite, recent story on the local news channel surfaced from the outskirts of Tel-Aviv, but the issue holds great interest within the borders of France.  The scoop?  The emergence of the Poo Police. 

 

Dogs are a central part of French society.  What other accessory, for example, does a French women-of-a-certain-age find utterly more fashionable than a straggly-haired Yorkshire Terrier toted within her oversized handbag? 

 

What possibly could be a greater statement of elegance for this lady than lifting (oh-so-gently) the scrawny rascal from her handbag and situating it on a comfy chair alongside her in all fashion of restaurant?  (And by “alongside” I do mean, often, that the mutt is seated on a chair right beside this lady.)   And why, for that matter, leave dear Fifi home from church?  Or even from the grocery store – a veritable feast to the little rat?  

 

Taking matters – in my mind – well over the edge of sanity, in what other country could one possibly find dog groomers advertising an “epilation”?  A good dog waxing?  And somehow, I’ve yet to see a single, one-eared Frenchman. 

 

It is true.  Weedy little Fifi is fondled in France.  She’s a pivotal character in many a good French family.

 

So when the average Frenchman – or should I say French lady here? – hears a story about dogs on the television broadcast, she sits at attention.  This, my friend, is news.

 

The recent news is that a suburb of Tel-Aviv is getting serious about dog poop.  The city is collecting and cataloging the DNA of its dogs.  Dog owners who scoop Fido’s poop and put it in special bins are eligible for rewards.  (Think of the job creation stimulated by this scheme!)  Dog owners who leave the cargo on the street could be fined by the Poo Police.  (More job creation – but how DOES one characterize the role majestically on a CV?)

 

And so if, as we have determined, Fifi is a big deal in France, then so is her crotte.  In most parts of the civilized world, dog walkers carry plastic bags.  When Fido-the-Canadian squats to do his business, for example, Fido’s owner swallows his pride, bends at the knee, and scoops the warm heap into a sack. 

 

Not so in France.  The world over has gotten whiff of the fact that Fifi leaves her trail on French sidewalks.  But does humanity have any idea of its volume?  In Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow’s widely circulated book Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong, readers are treated to some rather stinky statistics.  The numbers focus on Paris (like much of the world does when contemplating France from the outside), but let me assure you that what happens further from the seat of government cannot be a heckuva lot prettier.  It’s probably worse.

 

Two hundred thousand dogs in Paris drop ten tons – that’s 20,000 pounds! – of cargo for public viewing every day.   EVERY DAY!  (Where, I wonder, do you find the poor fonctionnaires who amass these statistics?)  What’s more, each year an average 600,000 folks break an arm or leg by slipping on a pile, or by trying to extract the remnants from the bottoms of their shoes. 

 

These figures, I must admit, are a bit out of date.  Nadeau and Barlow’s book was published in 2003.  Moreover, with whichever French person I discuss the matter, I hear a rebuttal about improvements in the sidewalks over recent years.  I also must admit that things do seem to be on the uptick crotte-wise.  Yesterday, in fact, my mother (who is visiting us from the US) reported an honest-to-goodness poop-and-scoop operation performed right here on the sidewalks of Antibes.  Mind you, she reported plenty of contrary evidence, too.

 

For whatever reason – a disregard for minor laws (as leaving Fifi’s mounds is technically illegal in France), a lack of governmental supervision, or the fear of losing one’s dignity – many Frenchmen still cannot be bothered to stoop and scoop. 

 

And that must be why this news item out of Tel-Aviv bears such relevance in this part of the world now, even while End-of-the-Planet headlines plague others. 

 

You must wonder:  Is this DNA quest going a step too far?  When the Yanks are fingerprinting old ladies who venture through their airports, swooping down on the world’s next great regime of terrorists, the French are, effectively, fingerprinting their dogs.

 

On second thought, maybe the French initiative will prove the more useful of the two.

 

And for the moment, this notion of DNA gathering – just like chartering airplanes and sailing megayachts – certainly is useful in taking people’s minds off real-world calamities. 

 

So here’s a suggestion:  If serious commentators have you down, toss your wares into a bag and come wander the lanes of la Côte d’Azur. 

 

Just be careful not to slip.

On Which Side is Her Bread Buttered?

How I know that my three-and-a-half-year old daughter is losing her American roots:

 

I tell her today that we are going to eat bagels for lunch.  (Bagels are a novelty item in France.)

 

“What’s a bagel?” she asks.

 

Never mind that, back in Denver, Laurelle could spot our local Einstein’s Bagel shop from the rear of our fast-moving 4x4 when she was a mere one-and-a-half-year old.  I do not exaggerate. 

 

So I tell her, “A bagel is a piece of soft, round bread with a hole in the middle.  You used to eat bagels all the time when we lived in Denver.”

 

On the way to the café that sells these novelty bagels, we walk by a boulangerie.

 

“Mommy,” Laurelle says, “I want a baguette.”

Missing Link

I’m sleepy.

 

That’s not a good thing as I sit in a comfy chair along a well-mirrored wall chez le coiffeur. 

 

My last visit to the hair salon was not entirely a success story – see the blog on 5 August 2008 for the full saga.  But this mop of mine has lurched out of control on last week’s African adventure, topped off by treks through the Rwandan jungle in search of mountain gorillas.  (Beholding the 220-kilo silverback Guhonda, his four-or-so wives, and their bevy of furry babies was, incidentally, fabulous.)

 

It’s no wonder I’m feeling tired.  But I’m now back in France with a vengeance, having whizzed through morning errands, I sprint to le coiffeur.  I’m already 10 minutes late for my appointment.

 

Yes, un rendez-vous!  You heard me right.  A real, appointed time, fixed in advance, for me to meet le coiffeur.

 

Astute readers will recognize immediately that I’ve changed my choice of salon.  Out goes the ad hoc, come-as-you-please routine at the locally based shop.  Bye-bye to all-black, coiffeur-team duds.   Au revoir to the dangling, silver chains and jet black, ultra-cropped fringe of my former stylist, the one who screamed high-street-fashionista-cum-back-alley-dropout.  And toodle-oo to me:  Barbie-with-Roots.

 

Today I hold high hopes of re-discovering a bit of the real me – of scoring a new set of highlights, une mèche, that will eradicate every ounce of fakeness on my head.  Dessange is a Paris-based salon with shops from Boston to Cyprus.  One of its outlets graces a cobbled thoroughfare in Old Town Antibes.  It is to this hallowed chair that I am late.

 

I stream through Dessange’s glass door and apologise for being en retard, summoning as much courtesy as my modest French will allow.  I notice immediately that all employees float around the salon in crisp, white duds – not black, hipster ones.  And la coiffeuse (as she is a woman) who has been assigned my mess looks less like an MTV wannabe and more like, well, Snow White.  She wears no silver chains.  In fact, she wears no jewelry at all.  Her hair – jet black just like the creator of Barbie-with-Roots – frames her face with soft curls at the shoulder and a fringe that tumbles just above her eyebrows.  In short, she looks normal.

 

Snow White – I never get her name – inspects my mess.  I tell her it has only been eight weeks since my last fixer-upper.  A mere eight weeks! 

 

She shakes her head.  She promises to make my problem “beaucoup plus mieux.”

 

Much better, eh.  Given the state of my world, that’s hardly shooting for Venus. 

 

Guidance.  Should I offer la coiffeuse guidance on her next challenge, I wonder?  But of course!  Laissez-faire-ness is exactly what got me into trouble with my mèche last time.  Dozing off – just back from trekking to Guhonda and his tribe or not – will have to wait. 

 

Six years of French study have suddenly evaporated from my sleepy skull, it seems, but I manage to explain to Snow White that I want light AND dark highlights in my hair.  Yes, I DO want dark mixed in with the lightening agent.  And the light bit – not too orangey.  Not one dot, actually, in the entire, orange spectrum. 

 

Of course, she says.  She’s clearly not a chatter.

 

Snow White mixes a couple pots of color, one light and one dark, and starts in.  Her method, I notice, is far from that used during any other mèche delivered to my locks, whether I sat in the US or England or South Africa or elsewhere within l’Hexagon.  Sure, la coiffeuse holds the usual comb and paintbrush in her hands, but she daubs the goo onto my hair with her latex-gloved hands.  And in place of the usual, neat strips of aluminum foil that fold around painted clumps of hair, this coiffeuse tears a long sheet of cellophane.  Working in layers from the base of my scalp upward, she lays the film across consecutive rows of my painted strands. 

 

Time to intervene.

 

“Où est le…..?”  How do they say aluminum foil in French?  Or do they prefer the British aluminium? 

 

I try a different tack.  “Où est le tin foil?” 

 

Blank stare.

 

I try again.  “Le truc en argent?”  The silver stuff?

 

“Ça brûle,” Snow White tells me.  It burns.  She says nothing more.  Either she thinks I can’t speak her language, or she’s just, plain grumpy.

 

“Mais, c’est la mèche?”  I ask.  Am I getting highlights, or what?

 

“Non, c’est le balayage,” she tells me.

 

Le balayage.  Humph.  I’ve heard that word before.  It reminds me of a French word I do know:  le balai, or the broom.  My head is undergoing a good sweeping.

 

I ask whether this salon offers both la mèche, of which I’m supremely familiar, and this new balayage creature. 

 

Silence.  I ask again.  La coiffeuse mutters something, but I’m none the wiser.

 

This rendez-vous is not going so well.  It’s not so much that Snow White is brusque or impolite.  It’s just that I’m not one of her seven dwarfs, so she’s a bit of an introvert.  And outgoing is what I need after my last, horrific episode with the MTV Wannabe. 

 

I check out the handful of other patrons seated along the salon’s long, mirrored wall to see whether a sheet of aluminum foil sullies any of their heads.  Not a one.  All the other heads, I now notice, bear either white hair or a cascade of wrinkles.

 

So I watch my own head intently as it gets wrapped higher and higher in layers of cling film.  I feel like a bowl of leftovers that’s getting all gussied up to be shoved into the depths of a refrigerator.  I begin to work out how one explains this phenomenon, in French, but decide against mentioning it to la coiffeuse. 

 

The painter continues her work.  On inspection, I determine that this balayage thing isn’t entirely different than the traditional mèche.  It delivers strands of color through my hair, the light color just at the root and the darker one along the length of the chosen locks.  As a bonus, le balayage seems a much faster technique than the tin foil-strong mèche.  It’s only 30 minutes since I walked through the salon’s door, and already my head is virtually encased, toe to top.  I decide to volley this factoid into the court.

 

“Le balayage, c’est plus vite – plus rapide – qu’un mèche.”

 

“Non,” Snow White says.  “Pas necessairement….”  She is, she tells me, well-versed in performing this task.

 

Okay then.  As she zeros in toward the top of my scalp, I watch her section my hair, pull small strands aside, finger-paint larger ones in a neat “V” of lightening glop and then deliver a long dousing of the darkening agent to the smaller clumps.

 

“C’est comme l’art,” I say.

 

“Oui!”  Snow White smiles, flashing teeth as white as her t-shirt.  I obviously get it now.  La coiffeuse is an artist.

 

After ten minutes under a warm hairdryer, I’m more relaxed again.  I slide into a sunken chair for the best part of any hair salon visit:  the wash.  An attendant shampoos my hair and massages my scalp.  I close my eyes and feel my facial muscles soften.  Then a chilly rinse.

 

A second bit of goo plops onto my scalp.  It feels a bit colder and more viscous than it ought.  Snow White has returned.  She and the assistant work the goo into my hair, plucking me from what should be shampooing nirvana.  They’re hardly massaging my scalp.  These two are picking and scraping at clumps of my hair. 

 

My brain flicks back to Rwanda – to one of Guhonda’s ladies and the six-month baby folded in her arms.  Days ago I’d stood among clusters of bamboo trees, within five feet of this mother-and-child gorilla duo, watching the mother use her lips to groom bugs out of her little one’s downy, black fur.

 

I am the baby gorilla.  I don’t know what Snow White and her buddy are doing back there, but I hope I don’t have bugs.

 

My grooming continues for a good ten minutes.  Snow White speaks to her assistant in short, quiet phrases.  I only understand one thing:  “C’est clair.”  It’s light. 

 

Houston, we have a problem.

 

More bug-picking.  My brain fast forwards to the end of this appointment.  When Snow White lets me admire her work at the end of this visit – like all coiffeurs inevitably do at the end of a job – what if I feel sick to my stomach?  What if I get another Barbie-with-Roots job?  I resolve, here and now, that I will – yes, I will! – declare my misery rather than smiling bravely back at the mirror. 

 

Snow White interrupts my contemplation.  She tells me again that my hair will be much better than when I walked in.

 

That’s only marginally reassuring.

 

She picks out the last of my bugs and asks the attendant to work a conditioner into my hair.  As Snow White moves away, she turns and declares to me, “C’est magnifique!” 

 

The artist is over-the-moon with her canvas.  Guess this means I cannot complain.  I try to relax into the last of my massage.

 

Back in the styling chair.  I’m staring at a wet mass of brown and golden string piled on top of my head.  Snow White combs out the knots.  All wet, I can hardly tell what color my hair will be, but it does look – how shall we say? – different than I’ve ever seen it.  More camouflage-patterned than anything streaked.

 

Snow White trims my locks, then tugs at them with a round, bristled brush to blow them dry straight.  She begins in the front, letting the dried strands cascade over my face.  When the dryer buzzes directly over my left ear, she starts to speak to me.  Something about shampoo.

 

It’s like listening to a foreign language over a bad cell phone connection.  On the third time round, I understand that I need to purchase some special brilliance shampoo to keep my balayage, well, brilliant.

 

Of course.  What’s a good hair cut without the sale of a hair product?  Behind my screen of hair I debate the purchase (which I will eventually agree, carrying a little bottle of shampooing “personnalisée” out of the shop with me).

 

Shortly Snow White is cooing over her newest work of art.  “C’est magnifique!” she says again.  She declares the dark color particularly good (as if the idea was hers in the first place). 

 

I’m, of course, none the wiser.  I can’t see much of anything from behind my shroud.  Now I’m the quiet one.

 

So Snow White launches her million-dollar question:  Does the color please me?

 

No more hedging.  This is the moment of truth.  I push away the cascade of hair that tumbles over my face. 

 

I am now wide awake.

 

My usually rambunctious hair lies smoothly – way too smoothly – against my scalp.  This flat fashion may be mod, but my peanut-sized head seems to bob on top of coat-hanger square shoulders.

 

Style, I quickly remind myself, is a temporary thing.  I must look deeper.  I must focus on the color. 

 

Compared to Barbie-with-Roots, the woman I was only one-and-a-half hours ago, this darker head of hair makes me feel as if I’ve become Guhonda’s newest wife.

 

But I have re-discovered a more realistic look.  And yes, that pleases me. 

 

Magnifique?  Well, maybe not.  But Snow White has won herself a new client.