AYearintheMerde

A Year in the Merde Stephen Clarke The chief beauty of this book lies not so much in its literary style or in the extent and usefulness of the information it conveys, as its simple truthfulness. Its pages form the record of events that really happened. All that has been done is to colour them. -Jerome K. Jerome, preface to Three Men in a Boat. SEPTEMBRE Never the deux shall meet The year does not begin in January. Every French person knows that. Only awkward English-speakers think it starts in January. The year really begins on the first Monday of September. This is when Parisians get back to their desks after their month-long holiday and begin working out where they'll go for the mid-term break in November. It's also when every French project, from a new hairdo to a nuclear power station, gets under way, which is why, at 9am on the first Monday of September, I was standing a hundred yards from the Champs-Elysées watching people kissing. My good friend Chris told me not to come to France. Great lifestyle, he said, great food, and totally un-politically correct women with great underwear. But, he warned me, the French are hell to l......