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means a Niçois phenomenon but most other places seem to have cleaned up their act. I find it
astonishing that France, a country that cares not only a great deal about what it looks like but
how it's perceived, would allow one of its more spectacular spots to be covered in dog crap.
It's like they're in denial about it.
There are so many dogs in Nice, none of which seem to get about under their own steam -
they are carried under the arm like a living handbag; they are, in effect, an accessory, but an
accessory that poos. There are very few dog poo bins to be seen, and although there are a few
dispensaries for 'poo bags', they are all empty. In the end you spend most of the time wan-
dering around Nice not admiring the buildings, the light, the beach or the people but look-
ing at the floor and making sure you don't get
merde
all over your loafers. Some cities, like
Toulouse for example, have tried TV campaigns to force a change of culture amongst dog
owners, but it's a slow process.
Personally I think the problem will get worse, and not just in Nice. In France, as in many
other countries with a 'sensible' Green policy, supermarkets no longer have boxes of free car-
rier bags at the checkouts; it's all about 'Bags for Life' these days and while that's all very
worthy, it's bad news for your dog owner because we've all run out of poo bags. It used to be
that when I came home from working in the UK my case would be full of the kind of things
that French cuisine simply isn't capable of reproducing, things like Wotsits, Marmite, brown
sauce and sausages made of sawdust, water and fish testicles; you know, staples of the Eng-
lish diet. Now it's full of carrier bags. On any given weekend, if I stay in a hotel and shop
individually for each meal I can get about a dozen bags. And we need them too, or at least
Natalie does as this is very much her department. Honestly, her day revolves so much around
the collection of animal excrement she could take a PhD in Scatology. She patrols the garden
picking up any dog mess, so that the boys don't play in it, then she mucks out the horses and
rounds up all the manure in the paddock to sell or use for bartering, and in between times
she's emptying the cat litter trays and changing Thérence's nappy. (All of that changes when
I'm at home of course; I occasionally change the nappy.) However, our shortage of poo bags
had become so dire that I had started hanging around the fruit-and-veg section of the super-
market and, when no-one was looking, grabbing handfuls of the clear plastic bags and hiding
them under crates of beer. It is very undignified and just one of the many unreported conse-
quences of being 'eco-friendly'.
In my absence the cats had grown at an alarming rate, to the extent that I was almost con-
vinced they weren't semi-feral, semi-domesticated cats at all, but actually a family of aban-
doned black panthers. Walking into the living room was now like being in a scene from a
Born Free
spoof, as three quite large cats prowl round the place or lie in a postprandial daze
on the rug next to the remains of a zebra carcass. I'm convinced that they will inevitably rip
me to death one day, while Thérence will go on to make a fortune in the circuses of Las Vegas
sticking his head in their mouths.
