Reach for the pastis, Jacques. A law is making its way through the French parliament to relax alcohol licensing, to make it easier to open bars and cafes in French towns and villages. French politicians are desperate to try anything to stimulate commerce in villages that are dying, the life sucked out of them by shopping centres with everything just five minutes away in the car.
That more bars will be helpful is likely to be wishful thinking. The days when the Café de la Paix was at the centre of village life are long passé.
It is easy to over-sentimentalise the role of the café in France’s 40,000 small towns. Even the coffee was mostly terrible. I am still traumatised by my memory of the Café du Commerce, on my first trip to France, with my parents and siblings, in around 1964.
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