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A beginner's guide to achieving social conformity in FranceParis was to be long sunny days meandering down the Champs Elysées, games of boules on little patches of gravel and kayaking down the Seine . Girls would all be blessed with the affected charms of Amelié, men would wear tweed. It would be Gauloises at dawn, amphetamine-strength coffees, fire-crackers, croissants and the cancan. Days would be longer, nights would be later, the entire place would exude beauty, charm and sophistication and before long, so would I… Three months in and my prophecies have had mixed results. My climatic conjecturing had perhaps the most disappointing results: much to my dismay, they have a dark damp misery of a winter here too. However, much to my delight, a heady mix of bank holidays, incessant strikes and a general contempt for punctuality has produced the dawdling unhurried crawl of life that I had been looking for. I have quickly learnt to inhibit my innate English tendencies in this field, for I began to realise that my hurried, red-faced, mildly perspiring and yet punctual arrivals were usually greeted with mild derision or a look of amused perplexity. Seemingly the correct etiquette is to meander in quarter of an hour late and greet one's acquaintance with a look of pleasant surprise at their already being there. To the same extent I soon realised that my quintessentially British passion for the apology had to be harnessed. For a timely injection of the word “sorry” was not the irreplaceable social lubricant that greases the wheels of a civilised society, on the contrary, the word sorry in French actually signifies that you are a blathering idiot swimming frantically against an incessant tide of social discomfort. To those in the know “sorry” is very much a last resort reserved for gross personal slander of the most derogatory kind. Admittedly, to someone who is used to an apology from anyone who walks within five yards of his personal space, this took a little getting used to. Fully aware of the reputation that the free-lance cultural ambassadors that are England supporters had bequeathed upon the English, my initial encounters made me wonder weather I had disturbed a hornets' nest of racial hatred . A deep paranoia had begun to set in: the shop assistants who had looked at me with such repugnance, the waiters who had pretended I wasn't there and all those to whom a “please” and a “thank you” fell on deaf ears, perhaps they were in collusion, perhaps they all knew, perhaps this was their silent offensive aimed at driving me out. Happily I soon discovered others who had received a similarly vicious social stoning, thus I was able to rest contented in the knowledge that such vile repulsion to encounters with strangers precipitated throughout day-to-day life. As time went by, this self-satisfied contentment began to evolve in to a deeper, more profound respect for this new-found loathing. For this everyday insolence was not representative of a hate-filled, blackened heart that was riddled with animosity, but instead, a much more admirable cultural trait. It became clear that this was illustrative of one the most venerable Parisian traits: a complete revulsion towards paid labour. Whether it be the taking of obscenely long lunch breaks, the ceaseless bank holidays, or the compulsive striking, foot-dragging seems to be a national pastime. Like the fine wines or the particularly smelly cheeses, the French seem to have a more mature approach to work: it is to be done only after the failure of all other options, at which time it should only be done in a sufficiently disgruntled state to communicate the message that repetition of said work is out of the question. Luckily, this attitude has disseminated throughout the rest of French culture and leads to a thoroughly agreeable lifestyle. For example, there is no vociferous escalation towards a beer-fuelled eruptive climax at eleven o'clock : bars gently fade away in the early hours of the morning when the barman finally becomes so excruciatingly bored at doing nothing that he can be bothered to close up. Furthermore, drinks are not gulped ravenously from the most voluminous container available but sipped in a sophisticated fashion from novelty-sized wine glasses. Furthermore, alcoholic beverages are appreciated for their flavour and not their super-human powers. However, having said all this, it's not all doom gloom and social exclusion, I have come to realise that by following a few key principles British people can come to be considered an acceptable piece of the furniture too. In the same way that we may come to love a plucky little foreigner upon overly romanticised, stereotyped and quite frankly patronising notions of their culture, we may feel the warmth of this love too. A boorish, linguistically ignorant drunk may not seem like a particularly flattering set of values to aspire to, however, add a dash of humour and you're the life and soul of the party. In particular it seems that sarcasm is an exceptionally poorly developed form of communication within French society, and thus they are remarkably susceptible to even its most amateurish application. However, if the higher echelons of popularity are still not being reached then the clincher is the occasional linguistic blunder, for not only do they have enormous comedy value, but they also undermine your intelligence thus nullifying any threat you pose, and finally, they render you irresistibly “mignon” (as far as I can tell this seems this is some kind of loveable idiot). If failure still persists, it is possible that you have intolerable personal problems that render you unlikeable, but fear not for even the most repulsive social leper can be redeemed by calling upon Irish ancestry. This is the French's darkest secret, their Achilles' heel, their inexplicable adoration of the Irish. It seems that a long, long time ago, it was the Irish who first exported previously unknown thing called “fun” to these shores. These magical factories of fun came in the form of what became known as “Irish pubs”. They were an instant un-abating success, and before long O' Sullivan's, Paddy's and Murphy's began multiplying. Despite the insipid range of beers, the dire pop music and the nauseating hand-me-down Weatherspoon's décor, the fervour does not wane. An inexplicable blot upon the otherwise impeccable French palette, but harnessed correctly and this can be your foot in the door. If you can stomach a Guinness then this is a good preliminary assertion of identity. Greeted with a mixture of bemusement and mild admiration, the Irish nectar is the perfect accessory to your new found Gaelic charm. One need not be over elaborate, an façade should suffice, say something about Dublin , pretend you like the Corrs, say you've tried the crack and you should have even the most hardened French hearts melting. In the unlikely event of you trying all these suggestions and you still encountering the ugly scorn of exclusion, fear not, for all is not lost. In the great traditions of Camus and Balzac, the French have a love affair with the eccentric outsider, meaning even the most eccentric fruit cake can obtain a respectable level within society. All you have to do is: nip in to your local charity shop, get an assortment of ill-fitting old suits or dresses (let gender be the judge), pick up a dog-eared copy of a literary classic (in extremely small font), take the garden sheers to your hair and then head down to your local café and wile the days away knocking back espressos and smoking incessantly. One might expect this to have negative repercussions upon personal hygiene and health, however, as I am sure you will agree, this is a small price to pay for social acceptance.
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