A packet of Nurofen s’il vous plait, and a bucket load of patience, NOW!

Well I apologize in advance for this wantant piece of rantery which may be all too familiar to many of you travelling boloists out there, but I just have to expel this linguistic filth before it gives me cancer of the innards, or even ze piles.

How many medicines do you think it would take to cure a kid of what appeared to be a common cold and an ear infection? Three, four max? You’d be wrong. Try fifteen of the fuckers! Yes, fifteen little boxes, vials of piss-coloured fluid and tubes of all-healing ointment were handed out to the young mum in front of me at the chemists, SLOWLY. I have come to accept the French attitude towards prescription drugs, which seems to be an unannounced race to the death to obtain as many creams, rubs, pills, powders, magic salts, charmed bolsa woods and prescription fromages as possible (“Docteur, I am not feeling too good, I bring my wheelbarrow, yes, for all ze shiny pills you give me yes, and don’t forget the 150 gallon barrel of prediluted vick’s Vapour rub, I think little Frank sniffed last week”). Accepting the fact that the more people are waiting, the slower the person serving becomes at doing their job is what I cannot do.

Ever worked in the service industry? In a bar or a shop perhaps? If you have and you were not on a barbiturate drip, you will doubtlessly remember that feeling you get when you know that people are waiting, for you. Only you doing your job can allow all the people to get what they came for and move on with their day, back to the office, pub, mate’s house or just plain old Home. Being aware of this fact makes you toil a bit faster, try and keep the queue down to a minimum. Granted, sometimes it doesn’t work that way and you get panicked, and maybe it even takes longer than if there were fewer people. The point is though that everyone knows that it’s your intention to work faster and get people served that has caused you to panic, and they appreciate that, allow for it. Even the laziest incompetent fuckwit knows to at least TRY and look a bit busier. Not on the Brie side of the channel though, oh no. The more people are waiting, the longer it takes. The more tuts of disapproval and reproachful glances, the slower the work gets done. The more aggressive posturing and throat clearing that goes on, the longer you fucking wait. It is truly maddening to the non-French psyche.

I went out to get some non-prescription pain killers earlier tonight, and when I saw that there were only two people waiting in the usually busy late night chemist, my heart leapt with cautious joy. A queue of four or five can take 30 minutes to get through, but with just two people before me, I felt sure to be out of there in 15 minutes tops. Unfortunately, the midget pigeon-molesting chemist had picked up on my optimism and unpacked all his special moves to put me right. “ZIS WILL TEK FUCCKIN AGGGGGES, ROSBIF”, his eyes whispered to me, as I closed the door and began killing time watching the Tenna Lady Pants advert, dubbed over from what can only have been American judging from the size of the bastards.

Having taken a prescription, he’d amble back into his store room with it and return with perhaps 3 or 4 items on the list and punch a lot of keys on his PC, then do a complex calculation on a smaller, probably pretend machine that looked like an old-fashioned calculator with built-in print roll. Next the customer, who would surely have been waiting for ages before I even arrived and hence be all too familiar with the dilemma of those behind him, would insist on asking very exact questions on how the drops/ointment/pills/horse spunk should be applied, just to make sure the doctor wasn’t joking. Long answers would be provided, followed by a description of what percentage of the cost of each medication was going to be reimbursed by the state and what, if any, would need to be picked up by the private health cover most people have here. Even though if you’ve got health cover, as he obviously did have, it wouldn’t matter because effectively you’re never actually out of pocket. Repeat the process a few times, and you think, right, excellent, it must be time for him to the pay the bill and just fuck OFF now, but no, he’s been holding back. Another prescription comes out, this time for his son, little Jean-Phillipe. And yes, of course he’s a good father and he loves his son, so he needs to know EXACTLY how many drops of monkey blood to rub on the wee blighter’s forehead each evening. Who could blame him? By this point I’d have to say me. Get the fuck on with it you cheese addicted, work shy midget pigeon toucher, or I’ll start foaming at the mouth and cussing you all out in a multitude of languages and regional lilts.

Ahhhhhh, that’s better. The badness is out of me. Obviously re-reading this it’s clear that I’m an uptight ‘Britisher’ who does not know the joys of the pseudo-Mediterranean attitude to life, and maybe that’s a valid criticism, but damn it if I know someone’s waiting for me to serve them something, I respect them, their need and myself enough to want to be able to provide it ASAP. What can be right about imprisoning people in your little corner of life with your own arrogant sluggishness? Zat, my frenz, is ze way of ze plumbait.