Macrons and coffee?

When  I was very young I remember seeing a reproduction of the famous equestrian painting of Napoleon crossing the Alps by Jacques Louis David in a freebie book that showed up in the mail one day.

 

The publisher--very likely Time Life--hoped to tempt you to subscribe to the whole series.  But in a family like ours, the book was just another way to ease the boredom until something else dropped through the slot in the door, like an individual portion of Captain Crunch, which showed up when the Posties were on strike.  The box advertised that Captain Crunch "stays crunchy, even in milk" and featured a perforated front, which open like barn doors to allow you to eat right out of the box.  Skip the Dishes is not a new concept in the history of marketing.

I don't know who delivered the prize package--only remember waiting for decision as to whether I would get it, or it would go to one of my other two brothers.  There were competing claims regarding who got the last such premium, to the extent there was even a precedent for junk food being delivered to our door.  The last priceless childhood badge of honour was a Batman ring from a Corn Flakes box.  I definitely got that one.  But there were always more, and, very democratically, every box had a prize, so the only scarcity value was in families with multiple kids or in the schoolyard, where the breakfast cereal was something different.

You remember the drill--get your whole arm into the box and dig for the prize--it didn't matter whether it was Nabob coupons, or Red Rose tea cards, or Apple Jacks (it wasn't yet Apple Jax!) explorer figures.  None of this stuff had any cash surrender value, but when you had shiny eyes bigger than your tiny hands, you couldn't live without it.

But back to David's Napoleon.  The Time Life book said Napoleon was a short man--expressed with the frankness of a haberdasher--who had one leg longer than the other and probably walked with a limp, and in all likelihood had an "inferiority complex" that spurred him to world domination.  Yes, I got all of that in a bag of potato chips!

None of this would matter if it weren't for watching French President Micron--it's Macron, but he's short, so why not?--giving French citizenship to a migrant from Mali who distinguished himself and honoured his home country by playing a real life Spiderman, climbing up the outside of an apartment building to rescue a child whose father was somewhere playing a video game.

But it wasn't just Micron.  When I was walking back from Bruyere in the Byward Market I saw a sign announcing what I thought said "Macrons & Coffee".  I thought, Wow, and Wow, a place where you can sit down and have coffee with the whole Micron family, including his taller wife and any children!  Imagine that.  As I approached the shop, I saw advertised in the window a Macron Tower, and, laden with extreme biases from reading that Time Life book back in the 60s (60s brainwashing didn't stop or start with the 60s Scoop, as traumatic as that was for all concerned or negatively impacted), I assumed that the Tour Eiffel had been renamed to honour Micron.  Imagine, now a croque-en-bouche that was available somewhere else than in the Parliamentary Restaurant.

But I was wrong!  It's not Macrons & Coffee, it's Macarons & Coffee, and the name of the place, in spite of the pink sign over the shop advertising macarons and coffee, is Quelque Chose Patisserie.  Nothing to do with Micron after all.

Consider this another extreme bias corrected, in the same way that retired Italian born publicans living in the North East of Scotland correct their coffee, not with milk and sugar, but with something a little stronger.  Tony, the Aberdonian who used to run a pub, many years later (when I knew him) owned a guest house on the Great Western Road.  Not only did he correct his coffee, but, back in the day, he also made his own black rum with the drips from upturned spirit bottles.

Tony rain me up to Slains Castle one evening where I bought an octavo edition of Thomas Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense.

 

All of this is relevant, somehow, to other extreme biases, which will require their own exorcisms, as I disabuse myself of all illusions, and, like a confirmed teetotaller, drain the day of all ambition--the name of a short story I read once.

Slains Castle was where Bram Stoker stayed when he wrote Dracula.  But that was another way of draining ambition, and not recommended for the faint of heart.