Major news of the enormously huge variety

A topic that I may have already touched upon - it, er, escapes my mind - is France's abject lack of pastry-orientated savoury face-stuffing paraphenalia, or more specifically, the great British pies and pasties. It is a terrific cause of concern for many of us furreners living in Paris. Indeed, one of the best-loved journalists of the now sadly defunct British Institute Newsletter, David Amazinglish, once wrote in its pages that he would offer a significant reward to any person offering information on where to procure a Cornish Pasty in Paris. The fact that no-one did, and that David has now left Paris to study in London for a year, speaks volumes, I feel, about the harrowing effect that a lack of pasties can produce on an otherwise healthy young man.

This afternoon I went to buy a new laptop from a dodgy but cheap shop in the 13th. Unfortunately this plan was dramatically foiled when the shop was found to be closed on Sundays. Like most shops in Paris. I would say "never mind, it was a jolly little jaunt", but anyone who's ever had to go to the 13th will see that this is nonsense.

Caught the métro back and got off at Bastille. On the side of a small boutique inside the station was a large poster saying "pasty". I walked past it. Pasty, I thought. The word went through my mind in search of something to connect to.* Then, suddenly, it hit. Wait. That poster just said pasty??? My word. I turned heel and rushed back to the poster, upsetting several commuters in the process. There it was, the glorious five letters of the word "Pasty", all in the correct order, followed by pictures of four different varieties of aforementioned foodstuff available at the counter, and - best of all - a small paragraph explaining in French what exactly a pasty actually is.

*This is a reference.

Anyway, you the Timberblog reader, like I, are probably thinking this is all rather too good to be true. I bemoan the lack of pie in this country and suddenly a shop opens at my local metro stop selling the concept of pasties to the French. But, justement, this is precisely the problem. They've gone and frenchified pasties. Result - they have created something almost but not quite entirely unlike pasties.* The ingredients, besides the pastry, have little to do with the true upstanding and morally correct pasty of yore. There's a bacon and cheese one, for example, or another with horrific vegetarian faff. They're served cold, not warm-from-the-oven like they should be. And this being the land of nouvelle cuisine, they were of course of a size that would hardly feed a small gibbon.

*This is also a reference.

Tomorrow I am going to try the chicken+spinach one, as this is the closest I could get to anything resembling a proper pasty, and of course they'd sold out of it.

In other news, my music is apparently interesting Sony.