tiny bubbles

On a lighter note, things I should not do at work: read about Trappist ales and extreme beers all morning. After all, even if there were cafés about where one could get a humble pint of Affligem or Chimay or Leffe (a favorite in the little white house in Cambrai, probably because it was cheap), it's not even noon. My American sensibilities don't approve of beer at breakfast hours. On the other hand, it's four in the afternoon in France, a perfect moment to sit down in a bar.

Really, the American attitude toward alcohol is regrettable. We have the all-or-nothing gumption that serves well when it comes to exploration and stealing other people's lands, and less well when it comes to binge-drinking. How scandalous to have drinks at lunch! How daring! How will one ever refrain from saying or doing regrettable things in the workplace? But one glass of wine or beer does not most people drunken make. Witness the bottles of wine in the teachers' lunchroom at my lycée. The French don't drink to get drunk, at least mostly not during the work day. It's just part of the daily life just as much as the long lunch is, though I can't deny both probably helped my colleagues deal with their unruly adolescent charges.

Anyway, the point is that I'm extremely suggestible, apparently, because now I'd love to dash to the liquor store on the main drag and pick up a can of Guinness with its rattly little ball, or maybe the double chocolate stout, since the big warehouse-style booze emporium that might have Trappist ales is a bit of a schlep. I'm going to spend my lunch hour wishing I had something fizzy and hoppy to be a counterpoint to my Thai leftovers. I think what I'm more longing for is the town square in Cambrai where we usually went for a beer, the sunshine and the tiny cars dashing over the cobblestones and the utterly stylish pedestrians and the inscrutable statues on the dome of the town hall. It's not so much the bite of the ale as the smooth patter of French all around me and the sense of ease and comraderie.

Unfortunately, I don't think my boss would be down with the idea of me keeping a six-pack in the office fridge, so that idea is dashed all to smithereens. I like my propriety anyway. It's constricting, but the support is like nothing else. I just ought not to read the Dining section of the NYTimes until it's properly time to eat things.

On the plus side, it does distract me from my desire to punch Bill Kristol in the face.