To not want to go out to dinner on a week night?

[Anna8888]

We get endless invitations to dinner parties on a week night. While we manage to fend many of them off, some people are so persistent that we end up having to accept. I don't want to go out at 8.15 pm, eat dinner between 9.30 and 11 pm and not get to bed until half past midnight on a week night when we have to get up for work/school at 7 am. It KILLS me, and the dinners are unbelievably tedious.

AIBU?

Well no, it wouldn't, because you were presumably introduced since you were going to be relatives.

Only if you are so constrained by social etiquette that you stop being who you are. Goodness, foreigners talk about the British having a class system, but, the way you talk, there are more strata to French society than a mille feuille.

I am also friends with a French girl who I met in a coffee shop recently - I am not going to be related to her.

Maybe I have a certain je ne sais quoi!

There are several questions remaining outstanding:

1. Can you not just hand over a card?
2. Why does someone think CD and Anna should get a room and have sex?
3. Is it possible to stop being who you are. Surely you are who you are as a constant regardless of how your views/ behaviours might alter?

Many people in Paris are immensely constrained by etiquette. If you don't pay it some heed, you will never make friends with them / navigate the politics of the workplace or playground etc (you of course do not have to adopt that etiquette all the time, just when applicable so that you don't violate someone's personal space).

Only if you are so constrained by social etiquette that you stop being who you are. Goodness, foreigners talk about the British having a class system, but, the way you talk, there are more strata to French society than a mille feuille.

1. Is the French coffee shop girl un poisson rouge?

Anyway going back to your original AIBU. I understand your problem.

I have 4 black tie functions between now and Christmas. Every sodding weekend is busy. Not to mention 3 other dinner type engagements every week (on a week night) for the next 4 weeks.

Yawn, yawn.

A very good friend of mine lives in Paris (almost under the Eiffel Tower). She has 2 children and a French husband and doesn't have any similar complaints.

A mate of mine who lives there says he yearns for a big supermarché to stop the endless brown nosing you have to do of local shop owners.

I think Anna is particularly anxious to fit in.

Anna - PLEASE tell me why you can't hand over a card?

My firm has offices in Paris. I occasionally work with these Parisian colleagues who are all lawyers and I assume some might send their children to your dc's school or equivalent. I also attend seminars and workshops with them. I wonder, Anna, whether you are describing a completely different world.

They have one head, two eyes and a mouth. And they talk to me and everyone else, with or without introductions. One (male I shall add) is absolutely friendly and once in a while we chat over the phone about our families and childcare (!) despite my meeting him in person only perhaps once or twice.

It never crossed my mind to think they were constrained by Parisian-anal etiquette.

Gosh, I am soooo glad I don't live in Paris. Things sound much simpler here 'up nord'.

But I sympathise with your OP Anna.

I also find it hard work that on weekends if you go to someone's house for a meal it takes so long that dessert isn't served until well past midnight. One or other of the DCs will be up before 7pm so I have to choose between socialising or more than 5 hours sleep.

Swedes - you have also written about your friend not sending her children to school in petite section. That is pretty radical behaviour here (given how it will negatively impact your children's ability to get into a good school later on). So may be your friend isn't really functioning in society here?

hullygully - cards are again a very English thing.

No children give birthday cards here, for example. I do, because I think they are nice. But no-one apart from me in this family does card giving.

Snogging it is then.

Anna, do they do Ste Cécile cards in Paris or is that local to me?

OTOC - yes, the length of the dinners is a problem - but my general understanding is that they go on much longer in province and with more courses etc than in Paris, where it is quite OK to serve entrée-plat-dessert or even plat-dessert with no cheese course.

There are definite sectors to French society.

the Bordelais are v insular, like the Parisiens - I was lucky enough to meet someone and hit it off straightaway and she introduced me to her circle of friends and that is how I got started here.

The expats are often quite grim en masse.

I remember when I first came here, a friend say 'I must introduce you to my butcher' and actually did exactly that, a formal intro to her butcher who then became my butcher too.

Unthinkable in Milton Keynes but very french.

Give me your famous man's initials Anna - or is he in this weeks Gala or Paris Match?

I would actually just start talking to him, but when your daughter is with you - I bet he is dying to talk about his new baby.

I have never heard of Ste Cécile - what is it?

I know about Ste Catherine, which I think is a very cruel custom.

i can never spell parisiens and never be arsed to look it up..........

I suppose it would be impolite to keep guests beyond 'le dernier metro'

i once went to a sunday lunch that started with aperos at 11.30 and we got up from table at 19.00 and were promptly served aperos again and got home at nearly 3.00.

Never again.

He is known by his first name: N and four more letters...