Fresh Direct

Dear Customer,
 
As each new year begins it is almost impossible to resist a profound sense of optimism with regard to the coming weeks and months; no doubt we are hard-wired to feel this way from the times when our Cro-Magnon ancestors celebrated the passage of harsh winter and the promise of warmth and plentiful food, and we can no more avoid a sense of profound well-being than a skylark can resist the urge to burst into rapturous song. With such sanguine reflections in the background, therefore, my sentiments on recent anti-British rhetoric from Nicolas Sarkozy and several of his ministers are perhaps a tad less barbed than they might have been in November.
 
It seems the Frenchies were somewhat provoked by David Cameron’s unhelpful “We told you so” reproach vis-a-vis the Euro currency and its recent difficulties. While calling for our international credit rating to be downgraded they heaped scorn upon us as a nation of cloth-cap-wearing, processed-cheese-loving scooter enthusiasts. The fact is that this latest round of raspberry-blowing is nothing more than a smoke-screen covering the REAL source of French pique... a refusal by Germany to embrace Gallic plans to deal with the Euro-crisis preferring their own solutions. As the old joke goes, “how do you get a French waiter’s attention? Start ordering in German...” and it is no surprise that the decision to insult old Blighty, creating the illusion of preserved machismo, would prove infinitely preferable to the risk of a public bitch-slapping from their eastern neighbour.
 
The brittle Euro must be a further nasty thorn in the already raw flesh of Federal Fanatics who dreamed of the creation of a United States of Europe. In their reverie they must have imagined a Utopia where the cars were German, the food was French, the police were British, your lover was Italian and everything was organized by the Swiss. Now, as if conceived in the darkest recesses of the minds of Brueghel and Dante we have a real vision of European Hell... the food is British, the cars are French, the police are German, your lover is Swiss and everything is organized by the Italians.  
 
It used to be said that the number of Frenchmen required to screw in a light-bulb was just one: all he had to do was hold the bulb up to the socket and Europe would revolve around him. How things have changed since the days of General de Gaulle and his infamous “Non!”. With the Germans calling all the fiscal plays and the English language cheerfully embraced by most member states as the Lingua Franca of the EU their self-esteem can rarely have felt so low, after all was the Common Market not originally envisaged as a means of controlling German economic might as well as the influence and spread of the English tongue? It’s not our fault that the Académie Française chose to paralyse the evolution of their own language by forbidding the inclusion of foreign words and phrases, condemning it to the same eventual fate as Latin, while English roared ahead to become the language of cinema, of marine communication, of popular music, of computing, of aviation...
 
Nor is French self-esteem augmented by the opinions of those other English-speaking devils, the Americans. Frequently pilloried by US popular culture (even referred to as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” in an episode of ‘the Simpsons’) French activity, or more usually inactivity, in matters military have caused many Americans to mistrust them, and led Yanks to the conclusion that going to war without the French on your side is like going hunting without an accordion.
 
Before our Gallic cousins become too dispirited I suppose I should say that we love them, on some deep level. Or perhaps don’t mind them TOO much. Otherwise how do you explain the millions of Brits who take their vacations in France each year? Or the many thousands of our countrymen who have chosen to migrate southwards and settle in new homes from Brittany to Provence? And what about the French historic contribution to the development of the finest food and wine? As I said, the promise of a coming Spring can make you sanguine! I would like to take this opportunity to wish each and every one of our customers, suppliers and service providers all the best for 2012, the year of the Paris Olympics! Oh, I forgot... their bid came second...
 
A final word on the subject of language. An Englishman in Brussels was having dinner when he overheard a debate at the table between a Frenchman and a German on the subject of which language should be officially ratified as the language of the EU. The German was insistent, declaring that the precision in his language made it the perfect instrument for science and technology which would serve Europe well in the future. The Frenchman, however, countered with the romance of the past, declaring French to be the language of Hugo and Voltaire, the language of poetry, the language of love. At length the Englishman picked up a knife from the table. “In Germany you call this ‘ein messer’. In France you call it ‘un couteau’. In England, however, we call it a knife which, when all’s said and done, is precisely what it is.” 
 

Kind regards

David Burns
MD Fresh Direct