Jozi street life

I'm in Jo'burg, standing at a traffic light with my car window open this morning. The Bokke arrived at the airport a few hours earlier at 7am and all the radio stations are talking about Rugby and nation building and standing together as one and how many people pitched up to give the team a heroes welcome. A guy approaches my vehicle with a window cleaner, to wipe my windscreen. I signal to him that I'd rather he didn't. He leans into my window and says:

I'm not gonna clean your windscreen. It looks fine to me. Just give me five, you know you are my favourite white girl.

We do the fist-to-fist 5er. Then he goes on in his odd mixture of a South African/American accent:

You didn't come with me to France, but you should have seen. Paris was green and gold! Green and gold - aahhhhh, it was beautiful there in Paris! And you know me, always seeking attention - I was all over the show!

Really, hey?

Yebo. Paris was great, sister! Now, why did you say you won't give me anything?

I have nothing with me in the car. Everything is in the boot, so tsotsis don't put a brick through my window.

Ah, yes I know. You have to put everything away. Sharp - give me five - I'm outta here!

And with another fist-to-fist 5er (clearly, I don't know the correct lingo but I know the moves, bra!) he ambles on to the driver behind me.

The Bokke have done a great job making people here happy and proud. And while the English continue to sulk, I don't think they will ever appreciate that this victory is far more significant in our country than it would ever have been in theirs. In England it's a sporting event, in South Africa it has become a whole lot more than that - it is a story about a people finding common ground and getting fired up together - standing behind their team unconditionally, and by extension standing behind their country and their fellow citizens, unconditionally, even if only for a moment. It's an important moment. We saw it in 1995 and now again in Paris. And that's why even people like me who don't really care for the sport stand up and shout in the stadium at the semi-finals, dress in green and gold and eat lots of broccoli and bananas.

Viva Bokke!

Jackass scooter chick

I love travelling through Paris by other means than my beloved metropolitain. Last night, I crossed Paris on the back of a scooter. From the south/western city limit to the south/eastern city limit, passing by the Eiffel Tower with it's green legs and rugby ball for the RWC, past Musée d'Orsay, the Louvre, Hôtel de Ville - a really beautiful ride in other words.

Scooter drivers are mad, it has to be said. When there was a bit of a backup of late night traffice because the Dept of roads was cleaning the quays of the Seine, my driver hopped onto the pavement. I thought of SA's taxis..
Then we cut from the pavement across an intersection at a red light and I howled: "You burned that light!" - French for going through a red light. "Ah non, " he replied "we're coming from the green side, actually." Meaning that because he'd hopped off the pavement close to a zebra crossing and for a second turned his front wheel sort of perpendicular to the lane we should have been in, we were now coming from a different direction. I thought of SA's taxis...

When we sped into Lady Di's fatal tunnel, my scooter driver had the good sense to turn back to me and to inform me of such. Now, there is not a person alive in Paris who does not know which tunnel the Princess died in. We were going too fast, there were cars around us and I was hanging on for dear life so all I could manage was to shout back, "so maybe you should be watching that 13th pillar and not ME!" And I thought of SA's taxis...

But all that is nothing compared to the style-humiliation I suffered on the back of that scooter. It's the pesky compulsory helmet law that got me. All my dreams of being a cool scoot/biker chick for half an hour were shattered when I found my helmet was just a touch too large. So during the ride I had the choice of either having it drop forward over my eyes, or opening my mouth really wide to exert pressure on the chin-strap with my dropped jaw and thus keep the helmet on my head.

And because part of the reason you want to be zooming through Paris over- and not underground, is obviously its beauty, a helmet-over-eyes scenario is not an option! So, yes, there I was, the jackass-scooter chick, hanging off the back of a crazy, trick-performing scooter with my mouth WIDE open to have a long enough face.

Luckily for me there were no Parisian 'miggies' at midnight to swallow.

Green & Gold

In honour of the Springboks's semi-final game in paris tonight, I am eating as much green and gold as I can lay my hands on. I'm dissapointed that France lost to the red Roses and I really hope tonight won't see the light-blue boys pulls the green asunder...

I have friends who ate the Kiwi's last weekend, when France beat New Zealand. They had a huge meal, consisting of all things black or fern-related, with Kiwi's for dessert. They wiped their mouthes with black serviettes and ate black olive tapenade and black pasta while their table was decorated with ferns... and it worked!

I have decided to try the opposite strategy for the Bokke today, as my French friend's plans of eating the English last night failed rather miserably, despite copious amounts of 'rosbif' consumed. Instead, I am going to eat green to add strength to our team. ( Also, light blue foods are hard to come by, unless we're talking candy floss!)

Thus I am proud to announce that by 10AM this morning (Paris time) I had already eaten a whole tub of green olives for breakfast. How's that for commitment? Lunch will be a green salad with egg thrown in for the gold and for dinner, I'm guessing I will have to get hold of some broccoli soup, regardless of what effect broccoli has on my constitution. I'm willing to see this as the sacrifice I must make for not knowing the rules of a game I only support once every four years.

(I even managed to slip in a quick mention of the Rugby in my France 24 weather bulletin for Africa today...tee-hee. www.france24.com - the English version)


UPDATE: Add golden bananas and crêpes with golden apricot jam to my list of foods for today. Yay! Crêpes...

Rugby in France

Seeing as this Hollywood Reporter (AKA me) is stuck in Paris for the next few months (-sigh) expect to see more frequent posts about life among the Frogs on this blog. I'd been trying to avoid posting too much about 'living with the French' in the past, but living in France requires such a high level of psychological preparedness and many mental tools and coping mechanisms that all the knowledge I have gleaned should not go unread. I have decided that a blog about Tinseltown and acting is as inappropriate a forum as any other to impart these tips and tools to you, my (one and only) reader. Who knows? It could come in handy during the Rugby World Cup, starting this week!

Meanwhile, here is a list of things you may have suspected about (or not cared a hoot about, more likely) our French foes friends, but never dared/cared to ask:

1. Yes, they do French kiss in public. All age-groups do it and anywhere is fine, including but not limited to, the metro, under bridges, on bridges, pavements, stations, in your face etc

2. No, they don't all smell of garlic and stinky cheese. A lot of them smell of hallitosis and perspiration.

3. Yes, they do all smoke. If it's français, it smokes.

4. Yes, the women wear impossible heels. Even on Sundays.

5. Yes, the men make ridiculously inappropriate sexual comments to women, no matter what the context of the relationship is.

6. Yes, they have wine for lunch during office-hours. An American business-taboo is a perfectly normal occurance here!

7. Yes, they carry baguettes under their arms in the street, just like one would imagine them to do.

8. No, they don't usually wear berets. They leave that to the American expats living in France.

9. Yes, customer service is a dirty word.

10. No, I'm not joking -except about point 2.

...but we love 'em all the same...