There was a fascinating article on these pages yesterday about the significance of the contents of a woman’s handbag. Fascinating, yet horrifying, specifically this aside from the leading French sociologist Jean-Claude Kaufmann. “It goes without saying,” says Kaufmann, “that men’s bags — when men have bags — are different. When women open them it’s a surprise and a disappointment.”
I don’t know about other chaps but when a Frenchman, particularly a Frenchman who is also “a leading sociologist”, says something like that, presumably in a silly voice like Inspector Clouseau, I regard it as a challenge. Because while women may well find the contents of my bag a surprise, none would ever, I trust, find them a disappointment.
A roll of electrical tape; a phial of Olbas nasal decongestant; emergency fag papers; some toothpicks; dental floss; a grubby adidas beanie hat to secure my hair in the manner of a hairnet while out on my bike; passport; fags; lighter; keys; sunglasses; bike computer; bottle of home-made orange squash; specs; diary; notebook; wallet; iPod; Oyster card; Season 5 of The Wire that I’ve just borrowed from Hilary; tape recorder; harmonica; calculator; bike lights; antidepressants; Nurofen; Day Nurse; Night Nurse; felt pens; chequebook; hankie so well seasoned that different geological eras can be identified in the snot; photographs of wife, children and cats; credit cards; copy of The Times; copy of The Sun; contacts book; two ever-so-slightly shop-soiled foam earplugs; several dog-eared Elastoplasts ... how could any woman be disappointed by that? Especially when it’s all coated in a light dusting of fluff, stale tobacco, nameless crud and sand from last summer.
I also like to carry a lot of cash. The modern trend for not carrying cash, in which even well-heeled people pay for derisory items in the supermarket by debit card, like students, is a huge frustration. It’s just plain craven to inconvenience yourself for fear of some kid trying to take off you what’s yours. I like to have £100 minimum at all times. Preferably £200.
I agree with Monsieur Kaufmann on one point, however. He reckons that a lot of men don’t carry bags because, in keeping with our primitive natures, we want our hands free for either attack or defence. Spot-on. Ease of movement is exactly why, even in summer, I never leave the house in sandals (you’re no good for anything in sandals) and it’s also precisely why I favour a rucksack, not, perish the thought, a man bag, or one of those single-strap courier-style bags sported by young metrosexuals. Crying out to impede your spear-throwing arm, those bags.
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Obviously, unlike the women in the article yesterday, my bag is light on cosmetics — and sadly, the male equivalent of cosmetics being weaponry, and contemporary attitudes to personal weaponry being what they are, I am unforgivably light on armaments as well. I haven’t got a spear in my rucksack, for instance, although if I could find a suitably discreet, perhaps telescopic, spear, I’d add it to the bag inventory. Probably just as well I can’t find one. As it is I’ve even given up carrying a penknife, having got fed up with pompous, finger-wagging confiscations at airport security. Even on a normal journey now you can’t risk bumping into some bumptious young copper unfamiliar with the old rule that a proper dad carries a penknife (and a hankie) at all times.
Of course, I’d back myself to improvise if I had to — perhaps some contraption involving the dental floss and the toothpicks. They could do a bit of damage.
Oi, Bernard, get in the queue
On the subject of French intellectuals, leading or otherwise, Bernard-Henri Lévy, a man so outrageously vain that he makes our own Melvyn Bragg, whose hairstyle he shares, look like a model of self-effacement, has been strutting around, white shirt open to the navel, bragging about how he stiffened Nicolas Sarkozy’s backbone over French intervention in Libya.
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I was struck by my colleague Ben Macintyre’s anecdote last week about being in a slow taxi queue on the Left Bank when Lévy strolled up and pinched the first available cab. Being British, Ben was outraged. But “no one else voiced any objection to this egregious act of queue-jumping”. Such is the elevated position of men like the soi-disant B-HL in Parisian society.
To the French, Lévy’s trade in (pretentious, opaque, meaningless, wrong) ideas takes precedence over his abysmal personal behaviour. To the Brits, actions always speak louder than words. Which is why our tolerance of champagne socialists is so low. And why the Royal Family have to at least pretend to be ordinary to command continued support. And, ultimately, why we fought the Nazis while the French decided they would rather spend the next 60-odd years pretending they had.
Made of money, those Normans
People who have “rich-sounding” surnames have more money, a survey has revealed. Leaving aside the suspicious circularity of that statement, what we think of as a rich name is apparently anything that sounds French, anything with a “de” or a “ville” or a “beau” lurking in it.
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My surname, I discover from an ancestry website, gratifyingly not only sounds as if it should be a mill town in Lancashire, but actually is one. A relief to be in the clear.