Thursday 14 October 2010

A French Cafe

Tue Would anyone in it adsday morning, Rich and I went to the cafe next to the mosque for coffee. Everyone in there was local white French. When the bartender/patron asked what we were doing there and we told him, he came pout from behind the counter, shook our hands and told us we were doing something useful and good. Other customers nodded  and smiled at us. Before we left, the patron brought out a map from behind the bar: it was the French version of the 'disappearing' Palestine series of maps, 1920 - 2010. Would a white working class cafe or pub in the UK have such a ma, such an awareness, such an attitude?
Would such a pub/bar/cafe in the UK or US identify as working class? The experience was moving, but the implied contrast was depressing. Here was a place that still had human identification and a left consciousness. I come from places where that has disappeared into a consensus managed by a profit-driven establishment and its master-servant news media. Vive la France gauchiste!

IW

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