Onwards and upwards

We're all out of the woods. After Fingernail 2's modeling of Jackson Pollock's new pyjama range at 2am the other night and Fingernail 1's performance artistry in the bathroom, Mrs. F and I successfully navigated our bouts without any recourse to Generation Game-like redecoration fantasies and can envisage a happy bug-free week while we go out and get ourselves poisoned by car fumes. Ah, the glamour of France! From what I've observed these last twenty-odd years of being a foreigner, is that it's only really the Scandinavians and the Teutons who really know how to live in cities. It requires a lot of mutual respect, limited traffic and as much green as the city limits can cope with. Dear old France fails on all three counts. We're getting rent-a-bike stations, semi-pedestrianised areas in the historic centre and the rest, but it's an uphill struggle if the populace stubbornly refuses to take public transport, preferring to sit in traffic for two hours than risk the humiliation of getting on a bus or underground train to get home in less than half that time. God only knows what it must be like to live in Mexico City full-time; I was there for a month a few years ago and the air nearly did for me in that short period...