Friday, I'm in Lille

and definitely not in love with anyone or anything, not even the weather which I am braving (stupidly) without sunglasses, and wearing totally the wrong shoes which I need to unlace, take off, put back on, relace, idem the pants, unzip, peel off, sob at pasty white wobbly legs in mirror, put on, rezip as I desperately lurch from one stretch cotton mecca to another, and dying of heatstoke and ignoring a rapidly increasing thirst in search of A Pair of Jeans that Fits and Does Not look Like it's from the 80's. And try not to get distrac - ooo, that's a pretty top - by the fashion pitfalls along the way. Mission:Impossible is finding a pair of jeans, and if I get dehydrated and faint from lack of food and too much walking along the way, well, that just might make the difference between the zipper closing and not.
Hell, no, who am I kidding?
Some French woman wrote a book for Fat Anglo-Saxons a while back called 'French women Don't get Fat*' (which is obviously a patent lie, but she did get away with it, so kudos to her I say). A more correct title would have of course been 'Fewer French Women Get Fat, Would you like to know Why?' Or more recently revised in my head as of today , 'French Women aren't Allowed to Get Fat because the Average Dress Size in the Fashion Stores Doesn't Allow for it'.
While the average dress size in most Australian Stores is somewhere around a 14 (Which is supposed to be a UK 12, or a French 44, but in France dimensions a 44 frankly seems more like a AUS 12, which would be a UK 10, and don't ask me to convert that into American because I'm not even sure that what I've said so far is correct), in France (still with me?) the average seems to be about a 40, which is not, as direct conversion would lead you to believe a size 10 but more resembles a size 8. On a good day. And if I hear one more overly tanned womans(How, already? How?) airy 'no, the 38 is too large, get a 36' I will smother them with the pile of jeans I'm heaving round the shop.**
If you are a boy, and can read, you probably didn't find this post very interesting. But then the fact that I can't get a decent pair of jeans is somehow your fault I'll bet anyway, and if it's not then it should be. Because I need some scapegoats. And I'm not getting chocolate involved in this, we go back a long way, me and chocolate.

* Actually, I've got nothing really much to say against the book, it's all about joie de vivre and drinking water and not stuffing yourself and not eating junk, and all that standard boring common sense.

** I did finally find a pair. Don't fret. They are too big. But I am well beyond caring.