The French Have a Word for It

Our friends across the Channel once characterised us as 'a nation of shopkeepers'. It was meant to be a criticism but, after experiencing a few French shops during my recent stay in Bergerac, I'd take it as more of a compliment.

Try wandering into any shop at five minutes to two. Take your wallet from your pocket to indicate, as clearly as you can, that you are here with the intention of buying something. Do what you have to in order to imply that you have the ready cash about your person, and intimate that you have made your choice of purchase.

None of this will be of any use. With the clock ticking away in the background, you can only watch, powerless, as the owner busies himself with the important task in hand of making sure he shuts up his shop at precisely 2pm.

Your protestations (in any language) will be in vain. He will mutter dark, French words at you whose meaning you can only guess at, while he glowers, disapprovingly. No other inference is possible but that he wants you out of his shop, and pronto. No matter that you might be planning to spend 300 Euros on an espresso machine (as a gift to your friend, who has been such a fine host to you by allowing you to mow his lawn). You will not be allowed to buy it.

Instead, you will leave the shop to the sounds of the Town Hall clock striking two, with nothing more substantial to show for your troubles than a flea in your ear, where it scurries around to the ringing of the shopkeeper's convivial final words to you: "Depart!"

The French, then, will never be a nation of shopkeepers, because they seem, fundamentally, disinterested in the notion of making money from their enterprise. The shop, to the French shopkeeper then, appears to be little more than a place they go to practice some strange, continental hobby of some sorts. Some might find such an approach rather charming. Not Bill Blunt, I can assure you!