The French experience

Yep, I got it – French cliché music in a French café – something you wouldn’t get back home. Fair enough, French music is rare enough let alone French cafés in Ireland! But, ya know, when we do hear Irish cliché songs at home, it’s usually in Dublin or Killarney, i.e. just for the tourists. You’d never hear an of-sound-mind Irish person shout, enthusiastically and whole-heartedly, for the band to play Molly Malone! Ironically, the place where music like that could be played is the same place where people of-sound-mind are absent, or, if present, where they are turned into people of-unsound-mind.

In case you didn’t know, the French are clichéd – the things you think are stereo-typical of French people are just typical. It’s fitting and apt that the French have given us the word, and it would lose its meaning if its truly French character were to go.

I’m sure you can appreciate, as much as I do, that we still spell it ‘cliché’ and not something as truncated as ‘cleeshay’ or ‘clichay’ . Heavens no!

So I heard a typical French song in a real French café (outside the city centre of Paris, in Porte de Montreuille), except... the café was run by, and full of (save yours truly, of course), second generation immigrants. 
Hmmm.