The Missed Salon

While at the 'Puces' you can wet your whistle at the Voltaire.

Cauliflower War Victors Yet to be Named

Paris:- Saturday, 18. April 1998:- The salon I wished I hadn't missed started yesterday I think, and runs until tomorrow. It is called the Salon du Petit Dejeuner et des Pauses Gourmandes and I missed it because I have breakfast at home.

According to the report I am missing some pretty good stuff - if you like breakfast in France. I mean, if you take a bit of fresh bread, hugely slathered with real gobs of butter, dunk it into a medium-sized soup-bowl of café which tastes like watery chicory, which leaves butter floating in it - I mean, if you want to call this a 'petit dejeuner,' then go ahead.

I once had the good luck to cross the Atlantic in a monster storm and this enabled me to have a table for eight for breakfast for four days running. In addition to the eight place settings, I had two or three waiters; which was a good thing because they fell down often.

There was only one menu, but it was three pages of text, not counting the cover, which said 'Queen Mary' on it. You can get a fierce appetite at sea and I can remember pretty much of what I had, but it would be vulgar to mention it all. I didn't have many kippers though, because I'd just spent a month having breakfasts in Sweden.

But I tell you; that was high-life. After 90 minutes it was alI I could do to get up from the table, grab a life-line, and haul myself uphill into the third-class veranda bar, just in time for elevenses, which cost a whole 25 cents a pop, and were always made by the head mixer just the way I liked them.

Then I would sit right in the middle of the front, and watch the bow disappear beneath the waves as big as small apartment buildings, until it was lunchtime.

Le Parisien had the stunning news and the French were shocked. The headline screamed, 'Obesity' like an obscenity; followed by the dreaded catch-phrase, 'The New French Illness.'

France already has so many illnesses that it is the world's number one tranquilizer consumer, and one doctor laments that the Fat War cannot be won without more and better, new drugs.

Another doctor says a possible cure may be found by following the psychological trail, but this is actually at the end of a list that starts with drugs, goes on to diets, followed by surgery, and sporting activities.

For diets the advice is always the same: take in fewer calories without suffering too much from daily deprivation - but beware of falling off the wagon. It is much worse to diet and lose than to never have dieted at all.

Fat French people make up 8.2 percent of the population; which translates into 3.5 million adults. Another part of the report says few fatties live in the Ile-de-France, which is why readers of Le Parisien are understandably shocked and horrified, because they probably didn't read this far - and have gone out and signed up for the latest low-fat psycho-drugs.

The Paris Prefect of police has announced the official opening of the de-rat season; which runs from 20. April to 20. June. During this time all building owners and tenants are required by law to get rid of rats and mice.