French are amazing!

This s my long promised and long postponed an almost X-rated post. I am not a frivolous person, some would call me even prude, but my sense of humour does not allow me to keep such am amazing story untold. You may find the story unbelievable and even I have difficulties to believe myself and my memory. All of it is true though and my memory serves me right. I have even a witness of the events. So here it goes…

One Sunday afternoon, my partner and I were coming home after a golf game and to our surprise there was a police van parked in front of this respectable building we thought we lived in. There must have been about ten policemen in front of the gate to Rue Tronchet 27. Some were walking around the van, some were sitting inside. I felt really worried and scared.. The building did not seem to be safe to enter. However the policemen looked happy and even amused. Maybe the danger was not that great after all so we decided to try to sneak into safety of our apartment. As we entered the gate, we met a very angry man shouting and gesturing angrily. Alas, in French! Walking along the man there was a policeman, judging from his very elegant uniform, of a high rank who tried to settle the man down. It did not seem to help and the man was still shouting while leaving the parameters of the building. Things were really not to his liking.

It is difficult to blame us for being curious what the story was all about. Through the windows we could observe the policemen. They seemed really amused. There was a lot of laughter and shrugging shoulders French way. The high ranked policeman went back through the gate and walked into one of the courtyard staircases. In the past it must have been a kitchen staircase of the house. Our kitchen door opened to this staircase but at the time of the events, I was not aware of who might have lived there and why our apartment had a second staircase at all.

The police van was still in the street and the men seemed to have a really good time. After some time the commandant appeared in the street again in the company of a young woman I often thought in the courtyard before. She looked like a schoolgirl. White, starched blouse, black pants and a pony tail of long black hair. Very neat. 

She looked a little like this. You must agree that it was something schoolgirlish about her.

Now everybody was smiling and looked friendly. The girl gave the whole squad a friendly wave and walked away down the street. All policemen got into the van and the street looked normal again. Hardly anybody there, till Monday morning.

We were very puzzled by the whole event and could not even start guessing what it was all about.

Next morning I met in the courtyard our concierge who was Polish and we had a common language. I was still curious about what the Sunday afternoon story was all about. I asked her. She looked a bit embarrassed, waved her hand dismissively saying “Ah… it was nothing. The girl apparently promised the client deux fois pour 200 Franks and did not quite delivered as per agreement”.

Modesty does not allow me to translate it to English. I thought that it was a strange and rather minor offence. If it was an offence at all. That the client called the police is difficult to comprehend, at least to me, I am not French after all. What he really expected? 100 Franks back? Or delivering the service as promised?

Another point is that my observation made me believe that Parisian police typically ignores calls. Opposite our building was a Cacharel shop with either many bakes in or a faulty alarm system. We were woken up many times in the middle of the night with a very loud alarm system that was set off. I never saw any police coming to check up what was the matter.

Isn’t France wonderful? Aren’t values a bit different to the rest of the world?

 I am not sure what the readers may be reading into the story but just for the less experienced in life, the shy school girl was actually a person working in the oldest profession.