Eleven days out of Ireland-it couldn’t have gone wrong. No way. Not with this lady’s unrelenting cabin fever that a weekend in the wilds of Leitrim could do nothing to ease, in fact that weekend in Leitrim only aggravated the itch. And so I was uncharacteristically patient with the over-abundance of dodgey male jewelery and the whole camping thing, the sitting on a child’s stool to eat and the fecking heat. (Japan taught me that a fortnight’s roasting, sizzling and baking, lying on the flat of your back for days on end purely to be awarded a few watery ‘Jaysus! you’ve a great colour!’comments upon your return is just not worth it. I’m deathly white, and accepting of this. At best the colour will last a week. Oh! How times have changed from the factor five bronzing oil sported for three months on Greece and the protection-free cooking during the summer in Nice. ) Anyway, the male jewelery, twas tragic, Aye it was and so far from chic that you couldn’t even see ’style’ on the horizon and you looking through a pair of top-of-the-range binoculars. Awfuler-than-thou ‘gold’ chains, thick enough to double up as a sturdy pull should your car break down and you find yourself in need of a tow; knuckle-trasher rings diamonte-ordained; and well they’re not quite jewelery but i feel that they’re just as tragic, white socks. I left France fearing for the reputation of it’s inhabitants as being sophistiated in a fashion sense. Yes we did encounter some well-dressed ladies, but for every one of these there’d be a mutton-dressed-as-lamb ensemble to water your defiance that French women had ‘it’. Their one saving grace was their leaness and sun-kissed glows. Short black dresses, hot pink nails, a buffoned-hair-do, ‘Chrsitian’ hanging from one ear and ‘Dior’ from the other would have been met with ear-pounding sirens signalling the arrival of the fashion KGB had it been seen on a muffin-middled pasty Irish girl. Thank God our Mammys know when to give in to cardies and slacks and a nice Sean Creamer set and just be middle-aged. The food was good though. I’ll give france that.