french corner

bonjour, mon amis

it would, on the whole, be somewhat unusual (if not plain out of character, look you see) for me to give any time further than absolutely necessary to anything french. usually, if we are honest, such a reference made by moi would be limited to, for example "here is how something proper looks and here is the french interpretation of that". they are, after all, not really much good at anything of consequence. 

but, still, i am for some (inexplicable) reason determined (and dedicated) to presenting here things what i have seen on my travels that strike me of being of interest. whether they are indeed this or not is, of course, down to you, dear reader. i, as your humble narrator, can only throw it on here, so to speak, and see if anyone considers it worth their time. mostly, probably not, no. 

so it was so that i, me (moi) found myself in an area of that there London (innit) which struck me as being predominantly, possibly overtly, french. or frenchish. a number of people were walking around speaking "french", if you accept it as an actual, proper language. further, there were a couple of clearly french businesses there, too. yes, any normal person would look at any sort of french car and wonder how they have any sort of industry, but still. then i saw various things relating to De Gaulle, oh. 

anyway, i have now decided to refer to this aspect of London (innit) as french corner. not that i can entirely remember where it was. perhaps french quarter would be a proper or correct term, but no. it strikes me as being particularly difficult to fault the wisdom of London here, putting all french things to one side, in a corner. true, certain nations at quite specific points in their history (as in not really relevant now) have felt it better just to get rid of them (the french), but that's harsh. shoving them somewhere out of harm's way is perfectly sufficient. 

just over the road from the statue (pictured) is a building with one of them blue plaques on, indicating what it was that De Gaulle was doing in the vicinity. indeed, yes, i agree, i perhaps should have zoomed in, but still. no, you are right, there are no images presented here in the greater good and glory of Commodore 64 mode. frankly it's a bit much that i am being so polite and diplomatic about our when they need us friends on the continent, i am certainly not wasting superior image quality on them. 

what do i think (or what's my stance) on De Gaulle? never really touched on him in my studies, to be honest. i would suspect, mostly, that he first came to my attention in the original (superb) Day Of The Jackal film, which alerted me to the concept that one could blend real things (and people) with fiction in a clever, effortless way. from what i gather he wasn't too keen on any sort of integrated, dare i say union of Europe, and he felt no need to be grateful to nations such as the UK or the USA whatsoever. the former seems at odds with the incumbent frenchies, the latter strikes me as being the absolute personification of the frenchies. 

for some reason there are all sorts of (peculiar) bits of information floating around in my head. or wherever such things reside. indeed there was a temptation to say "useless" in respect of the info, but that is harsh, as all information is ultimately of some use somewhere. anyway, i recall reading, once, it being so that by population (please note) that there London (innit) is in fact france's 4th largest city, for there are so many of them living there. not sure if that was true or remains so, but there you go. welcome, all of them are. you have to give credit to people who realise they are living in a dire country and so go live in another quite close by. 

regrettably the french shall no doubt appear in this blog again at some point, but i (very) much doubt that i shall afford them a post in its entirety like this. well, maybe. i do have a lovely Inspector Clouseau box set here, perhaps i shall watch all of them films again and comment here. 

sacre bleu, avec moi tres bien donnez moi (or whatever)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!