What a performance from Bordeaux! 🥳 Also enjoying the post-match interviews about 'le back-to-back'

Dover has been seeing long queues at peak times since before the start of EES. Even when (if?) EES is finally up and running, this might just be the new normal for post-Brexit Britain 🤷‍♀️

Very interesting read on a very scary group

Just saw @petefrasermusic.bsky.social talking about how on trans rights he is sometimes told to “listen to women”. He has QTs disabled (I do too!), but I wanted to add in the spirit of his post that one of the fundamental problems with the anti-trans POV is that cis women are not a homogeneous group

See, this is why you need a union . . . "At the French state rail operator SNCF the workers struck a deal that said they would work an extra one minute and 52 seconds every other day of the year and in exchange they would get Pentecost Monday off."

Journalism in the 21st century

It's going to be a beautiful day 😎

Huh! I had no idea that's where we get the French word for bin from. What a wonderful legacy

🇫🇷 presidential hopeful Edouard Philippe is now under investigation for embezzlement over contracts in his mayoral seat Le Havre. So what does this mean for next year's election? Will it dent his popularity? And could we really have a 2nd round run-off between 2 men who are both under investigation?

New podcast episode 🇫🇷 The French film blacklist and the right-wing Breton billionaire (plus some recommendations from Cannes) 🇫🇷 Why the French are worried about cadmium in wheat and cereals 🇫🇷 Special guest giving some tips on how to avoid your French renovation project turning into a nightmare

I found this fascinating as a; 🇬🇧 feminist of a certain age But lives in 🇫🇷 where trans rights are not a culture war issue Have watched a friend go down a deeply upsetting transphobic rabbit hole Really thoughtful and thorough look at a crazy period of modern history

Help! I need a fashion historian (or fan) of handbags — AKA purses, the woman-coded bag you put things in — from the 80s to today. Essentially, I need to know when a certain style of handbag became popular, and what 5–10-year era it symbolises. RTs and tagging others in the comments very welcome!

Finally got round to watching this (recently landed on Netflix, I think). A bunch of middle-aged 🇫🇷 men join a synchronised swimming team and along the way learn to talk to each other about their problems. A rather sweet antidote to toxic masculinity

Techy people - are there any search engines that haven't been enshittified? Been using Ecosia but it seems to have got worse and Google is now crap. I just want to search the internet for news articles on certain topics - is this now the hopeless dream of a bygone era?

200 Brits refused entry to France last year, Eurostat data shows, mostly due to previous breaches of the 90-day rule. It really is not worth trying to cheat the system or overstay your limit!

As we're doing food discourse today I submit this view-from-France of British cuisine . . . Beans on toast and pie totally fair enough, but the ration book?? Guys come on! The war did actually end a while ago (although my parents claim to remember the end of sweet rationing)

Statue on the seafront at La Rochelle showing an enslaved woman working as a wet nurse. La Rochelle is one of several French ports that are beginning to have a reckoning with their history as a major part of the slave trade

This week it seems that I am required to work 5 whole days due to an unacceptable lack of bank holidays? Also, someone has put 3 meetings in my calendar. I regard this as a grave breach of my human rights

This is a lovely film, also starring the beautiful and hilarious Josephine Baker

If you ever have a train connection in Nantes, do visit the lovely sculpture-filled park they have helpfully put right next to the station so that travellers have somewhere to stretch their legs. Truly top-notch planning

An exceptional journalistic long read

Even if your French is good enough to watch films without subtitles, this club is a great way to catch up on things you may have missed in the cinema and there are some real classics on the schedule for June

This might seem like harmless football 'banter', but the French far right has a long history of belittling and rejecting France's successful black footballers, like Mbappé, who they regard as not fully French, despite being born and raised in France and representing their country

Here's the new podcast! 🇫🇷 The €16m French château scam and the Brit arrested in Spain (plus, why does France so many châteaux?) 🇫🇷 Rent control may end in French cities 🇫🇷 How to say 'sorry' And . . . Is Emmanuel Macron forming a band with the president and prime minister of Armenia?

Exciting film news! Josephine Baker had an incredible life, I really can't believe that no-one made a film about her before. Interesting French director attached too

I'm in! Who's with me? ⚔️

Very interesting read 👇

1. It will be great! Do it, it will make you happy (unless you can't swim, in which case don't do it, it won't make you happy because you won't be able to touch the bottom)

Is one of those careers getting people's names right? 🙄

I found it quite depressing that homophobia is now so apparently normalised that most of the anglo press didn't even mention that the 'insult' Musk used was implying that the Paris prosecutor is gay. Was like being back in a primary school playground in the 1980s, and not in a good way

Seine swimming is coming back! 🥳🏊‍♀️

No such thing as too much fancy train coverage!

9 'curiosities' about 9 of May | The Declaration that changed Europe (and the world). #EuropeDay #EUHistory 🇪🇺🧵

And to think that modern Olympic champions just get boring old medals #TranslationFail

Red roses to remember French Resistance members on the anniversary of the end of WWII in Europe

Don't think I will ever get tired of the beautiful lyricism of formal French used in such highbrow matters as, er, tracking your FedEx parcel (although slightly disappointed not to be offered 'distinguished salutations')

Will definitely give this serious consideration as I head into the second of France's 4 public holidays in May 🍸

"Neither Edouard Philippe nor Gabriel Attal are ideal candidates. It would be more fun to have lunch with Attal than with Philippe. It would be less reassuring to imagine Attal dealing with a Putin or a Trump. (Don’t even think of Putin v Bardella.)"

Not saying the last 2 years of 🇫🇷 politics have been crazy, but tidying the office and found our sweepstakes for how long the 3 latest prime ministers would last . . .

Well, well, well . . . if this really happens it will solve a lot of admin headaches for foreigners in France 🤞

New podcast episode! Where the 🇫🇷 go to get good food The 🇫🇷 tech firm and its innovative mosquito-battling technique 4 départements pilot scheme to suspend licences of drivers caught using a phone . . . and why does the 🇬🇧 king think 'Americans would be speaking French if it wasn't for us'?

One of the very few 'human' details that you find in stories of the young Emmanuel Macron is that he loved karaoke as a student - a talent he puts to good use with a Charles Aznavour sing-along while on a state visit to Armenia Video 👇

Is it just me who cannot stop reading this guy's name as Paul Sexy-Ass? (I know that's not how you say it)

The latest 🇫🇷 political weapon appears to be public romances www.thelocal.fr/20260502/ins...

Happy May 1st

An opportunity to meet the people in your phone In Real Life . . .🥁

Writing plans and carrying out plans are, of course, two different things. But analysts say no other country had published such a clear and comprehensive plan and it sent an important signal at a moment when countries are reassessing their reliance on fossil fuels

Incredible photos from Paris, where a guy parked his bike and approx 10,000 bees set up house under the saddle. The local beekeeper turned up (by bike, obvs) and collected them, so all's well that ends well 🐝🌸🚲

Like there weren't already a lot of reasons to take the train, there's also the fact that they won't be cancelled due to jet fuel shortages. Here are my personal recommendations for beautiful train journeys to fun French towns 😎🏖️🍹

Bonjour to the (presumably 2 separate) people in my building who 1) killed a mosquito and 2) posted a congratulatory notice next to its flattened corpse