Low life | 18 January 2018

In France, or in Provence at least, polite rule number one is to say hello. You must offer a distinct ‘good day’ or ‘good day, ladies and gentleman’, for example, when joining the queue in the baker’s or at the post office, or when getting on a bus or entering a bar. A nod or a wink just isn’t enough. Neither is a self-effacing silence. ‘Bonjour’ is the password.

Since I have discovered it, I have been jovially saluting everyone right, left and centre. The inexplicable hostility I used sometimes to encounter in shops has stopped, and moreover the French have revealed themselves, incredibly, to have a fine sense of humour, which is roughly the opposite of my impression before I began to say hello indiscriminately. Admittedly, it can be a strain at times, this courtly republican spirit of acknowledging the existence of one’s fellow human beings at all times and under every circumstance, without irony, as though we were all living in a 1950s holiday camp, but it keeps you on your toes.

I have been in conscious possession of the magic word for only a few weeks. But I am using it with growing confidence and occasionally with a degree of virtuosity. Most wonderfully, those bars that I previously avoided because the regulars seemed to react angrily to my silent reticence (which I had erroneously imagined to be a form of politeness) now welcome me into the fold with open arms.

This happened again last Sunday. Driving back from a boozy lunch at dusk, we passed through a dripping, deserted medieval hill village. ‘Fancy another drink?’ I said. She did, she said. The bar was located in a narrow obscure cobbled street. I’d been in once before, in the days before I knew the password.