Patriotism rolled up into little balls

The recent winds in Paris have been tearing apart French flags. I noticed one yesterday at Place de La Republique which had lost its red band and was rebelliously pecking the air like a blue and white flycatcher.

This mangled flag got me thinking about patriotism and my old beau French.

In the first part of our long and winding relationship, French and I were living in London.

During this period French was a mighty and forceful advocate of all things French.

If, for example, I was preparing a salad and I left the lettuce in big pieces, because in Australia we have great faith in the ability of people to use utensils and therefore give them the choice as to how they wish to upload the lettuce into their mouths, French would say “no no no, in France we don’t do it like that, we cut it into tiny pieces, like this, see, that’s how its done in France and that’s how it should be done everywhere else”.

Sometimes, trying to be helpful, I'd wash his clothes for him and then roll his socks into little balls before putting them away in the drawer. One day, speaking in such grave tones I thought perhaps I was finally going to be given the old high ho, he said “you know Pinochiette, if you don’t mind I’d like to do my washing myself, because you see in France we don’t roll socks into little balls like that because they get crushed. You need to just put them in the drawer as separate entities."

Of course it was here that I realised that his overwhelming pride in France was in fact blurring the fact and fiction of what people actually do in France and that the law against rolling socks together was enacted by him and corresponded to his own world view that socks, like people, are better off single.