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| Françoise in all her glory. |
When I, le livreur, arrive at a client’s door, I
am sweaty. This is to be expected,
seeing as I have likely just parked illegally, negotiated multiple auto-locking
doors, run up several flights of stairs, and groped for the corridor’s light switch,
all with a family’s weekly shop clutched to my breast. I do sometimes worry that the appeal of
organic vegetables might be diminished by their being attached to a panting
foreigner, but needs must. The physical
challenge posed by a delivery is such that I sometimes think myself to have
fallen into a sub-par episode of Gladiators;
there’s no Ulrika Jonsson, but I do have a client who looks remarkably like
Wolf.
Second to these
domestic challenges, the next biggest barrier to a successful shift is
transport. The French have a nasty
habit of driving on the right, whereas my brain tends to adhere to the
Britannic school of motoring. This culture
clash made the negotiation of my first roundabout rather memorable; both for
me, and for the French gentleman I nearly killed. I’ve since found a simple yet effective
solution1, and now consider myself positively European when in the
cockpit of my van; I hardly ever swerve to the left, and have even been known
to gesticulate angrily at stationary traffic.
I believe my
boss to have noticed some of these British quirks when I joined the company, as
I spent my first few shifts driving not one of the brand-new
refrigerated Peugeot vans, but rather driving Françoise. Françoise is a
1985 Renault Express who lacks power steering and functional indicators but who
is gifted with a ‘choke’ and persistent smell of garlic. Had she been human, one would likely have seen
Françoise gulping cognac in a run-down Bordelais bistro. Her face, lit by the light of a Gauloise,
would crumple as she coughed up filthy joke after filthy joke, till eventually
she’d lose her temper and throw a punch at a passer-by. In short, Françoise was a shit. The extent of her shittiness, however, was to
remain unknown until the middle of a particularly difficult shift. I had managed to get to the first five-or-so
clients despite Françoise’s usual ploy of refusing to breach 25km/h. I ran back from the fifth client’s house,
very conscious that time was a ticking.
I jumped into the driver’s seat, thrust the key into the ignition,
turned my wrist, and, nothing. I tried
again. She spluttered, then
nothing. And again. Nothing.
And so it was that Françoise point-blank refused to budge in the middle
of my most stressful delivery round to date.
A lot of very hurtful things were said between us that evening under the
setting sun, and, as I loaded my cargo into the rescue vehicle, I knew that
things would never again be the same between us. Indeed, it was the last time I ever worked
with Françoise. I’ve since been working
with a much younger model, Delphine, who, despite her graceful curves, has
never quite filled the spot of my garlicked drunkard.
When I do manage
to arrive at a client’s door, the exchange that follows can be quite
fascinating. It’s not often we invite
strangers into the heart of our homes in the way we do deliverymen. Understandably, new clients are often put on
edge by this foreign presence; the exchange of goods and payment tends to be
clumsy and inefficient as the deliverer tries to help without imposing himself,
and the client tries to receive help without losing control. With practice, however, these exchanges can
become quite beautiful2. After
weeks of rehearsal, each party has matured into his role and the client-livreur relationship flourishes. The exchange of goods for a pre-prepared
cheque becomes almost balletic in its efficiency; there’s one client
who each week I see for 15 seconds before I am once again on my way. But, for every ying there is a yang. For every super-efficient client I have the
pleasure of working with, there is an equally inefficient client who, week-in
week-out, makes me contemplate suicide. Or,
at least, homicide. Some clients like
nothing better than to play hide and seek with their chequebook. Others believe that I am out to short-change
them, and so are careful to count every last sprig of thyme before paying. No,
Madame, of course I don’t mind you weighing your box of watercress. Really, Madame? There’s 500g?
Goodness! That’s exactly the
amount you ordered, you say? Well isn’t that a stroke of bloody luck?
It’s always
important to respect the professional nature of a client-deliverer
relationship, especially in France, where professionalism is a cult. Children, however, often do not share this
passion with their parents. On one
occasion, I was thanking a lady for her continued custom when her four year old
daughter beamed at me: “Would Monsieur
like to sit down and have a cup of tea with us?” I saw her mother’s eyes fill first with
amusement at the prospect of a delivery boy coming round for tea, and then with
marked panic, as she remembered that this delivery boy was English and might well take
up the offer. Unfortunately, I was
running behind, and so had to decline.
On a different occasion, a young boy plucked up the courage to offer me
a carton of juice as I unloaded the artichokes onto the kitchen table. Again not wanting to impose, I politely
declined. From the hurt in that boy's eyes you'd have thought I'd just shot the family pet, not turned down a Fruit Shoot. Indeed, he was so scarred by my attempt at
professionalism that he no longer acknowledges my presence on a Wednesday evening. It would seem that the French nation’s
professionalism is born of nurture and not nature.
So there you
have it; my daily bread. Granted, it's more white-sliced than organic-granary, but it strengthens the heart nevertheless.
- A heartfelt Hail Mary followed by a decade of ‘Drive on the right, or you will die’ tends to do the trick.
- Beautiful for a delivery-connoisseur, that is, much as a bacterium might be beautiful to a molecular biologist, or a well cleaned toilet to a toilet attendant. I’m afraid it’s almost certain you wouldn’t find my deliveries beautiful.
