Apologetic milk
Grandad September 11th, 2011
There are some things the French do exceptionally well.
They maintain their roads to the highest standards.
Everywhere, from the remotest country lane to the heart of a city is as clean and fresh as an entrant in the Tidy Towns Contest. You would be very hard pressed to find the smallest scrap of litter anywhere.
The people [in the region where we are] could not be friendlier if they tried.
Why then are they crap when it comes to the simple act of buying a carton of milk of a Sunday? Not one fucking shop open, and we traveled for miles. I got petrol all right but that was at an unmanned automatic place. Back home in Ireland, just about every shop in the village is open all day Sunday. For fuck’s sake, I can buy milk at any time, night or day, on every single day of the year without traveling more than a few miles. 3AM Christmas morning? No problem. As much milk as I want. Here? No fucking way. Not even on an ordinary Sunday.
The French have a funny thing about milk. If you do manage to get inside a supermarket you will find a whole aisle of the stuff. Dozens of brands, types and flavours, and all of it UHT treated so that it tastes shite. You have to make your way to a cold cabinet [usually at the other end of the shop] to find a very small sample of bog standard fresh milk. There will be about eight or nine bottles of the stuff tucked apologetically at the back of the cabinet as if it’s hoping no one will find it.
Very fucking strange.
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