It’s not like Stockport in Hazebrouck. There’s a market every week, the potatoes are dirty, you can go to the pub. And get a coffee. There are roundabouts, but not like at home; miniature, dye cast things with giants in the middle. The bricks are different and exist though the telegraph poles may, impose they do not.
I lived in Hazebrouck as a language assistant for 9 months. On my final days there, I took a trip around my favourite places in an effort to capture them, capture the memories, the bizarre emotions felt towards otherwise average supermarkets and the illogic intrigue of foreign street furniture. A few days ago, I received the processed film from the photos I took that day, and realised that those photos would never be enough. The rush of feelings I felt living in a foreign country for the first time was complex, and viewing these photos is a stimulant now just as it was on arrival in Hazebrouck last October.
My curiosity for the banal on European trips feels, in a way, peculiar. Hazebrouck is under 100 miles from Dover. Some would say that it’s not that different from your average Kent village. Why was everything so fascinating? Eventually, I realised that it was because I taught myself to be intrigued by things that aren’t really that intriguing: the paper on the menus, the way the weather is talked about, the perfection of the paving stones and the existence of a pavement at all. I’m sheepish to admit it, but I’m actually rather proud of that discovery. After all, none of the insights I’ll write below would exist without it. This isn’t meant to be a guide, or make sense in any sensible way. But, I do hope that you enjoy it. I will begin with the most important place.
The tabacs
The tabac is the place for controlled indulgement. It is in competion with la boulangerie for being the most essential part of a French town; while one can function without the other, it is much more desirable to have both. On offer are all the addictive pleasures a man can get; coffee, cigarettes, alcohol and gambling. Yet the tabac is far from a free for all. Though I couldn’t shake my habit of going to the bar of Café de Paris for the first few months, I eventually realised that this wasn’t the done thing. No, you sit down and wait; your destiny is in the hands of the waiter. Knowing this is strangely reassuring. Yet it is not always that simple; say you fancy a flutter. You may go to the bar, but you will invariably be ushered in the direction of the PMU terminal to the side. You may ask for a coffee as you place your bet, but make no mistake. Gambling won’t make the coffee arrive any quicker, for the bar is a complex operation, one of different universes which barely tolerate one another despite often being operated by the same person. Like the French state, it is designed to be resistant and unbreakable, not flexible to those who wish to bend the rules. To outsiders it may even look silly, but that is part of its charm.
Gambling in the tabac is better than gambling anywhere else. Betting slips are available but the more common choice among todays gallic youth is to utilise the nifty Parisports app, instead taking a QR code up to the bar to be scanned. Once, I left my phone under the scanner as the barman conversed with a regular; he was rather bemused when he turned back to the screen, before him on the screen 500 identical accumulators. Hundreds, possibly thousands of euros worth of bizarrely assembled accumulators; had this man really such faith in his knowledge of the English Championship? Don’t leave the phone under the scanner for any longer than necessary, I would learn. I was told this on multiple occasions, but the gallic charm was never insistant, not in that way. “Ca arrive”, he would say (“it happens”). The bit about it really only happening to me was unsaid. I learnt eventually.
A month into my time in Hazebrouck, I was doing my drying in the big tumble driers outside Super U (a supermarket), dipping into a huge bag of frites as they completed the final spin cycle (the clothes). Familiar with the unreliable nature of the Super U spinners, I was happy to be relieved from my bored snacking by the arrival of the owners and employees of the Super U tabac, having just closed up. “Ca va monsieur”, said a man in his early 30s. I explained that I was from Manchester, and a conversation about football inevitably ensued. Despite my still limited conversation durability and his extremely strong northern French twang, we muddled through. His mate, who didn’t work at the tabac, spawned in and began telling me about his ten fold accumulator, which appeared even more eclectic than the sorts I’d been placing at Cafe de Paris. The woman behind them, who I later found out was one of the owners, was as interested and jolly. Yet it was the betting man that convinced me. In a joyful cultural haze, I’d put all my eggs in one tabac sized basket. But as the winter months arrived in Hazebrouck, Cafe de Paris had a competitor.
My first visit to le Connemara took place only a couple of days later, post big shop. As usual, I took the cafe allonge. Sticking out like a saw thumb at the end of the checkouts (imagine the Wetherspoons in a plush new airport terminal), le Connemara gave off this curious warmth. I think part of its cosiness came from its isolation; it was a bar exiled from the outside world. Despite its location within the bowels of one of France’s largest chain supermarkets, the majority of its customers, unlike me, hadn’t come in as an afterthought at the end of the big shop. And the lack of engagement from Super U workers indicated, at the very least, that this wasn’t a Morissons cafe concern. Though there was an outside door, opening out to the giant tumble driers, and from there wider society, it was only when the regulars made their exits that the outside door’s hinges were made to do any work. As I was sipping away at my cafe allonge and examining far too intentionally the ingredients of the day’s shopping, I realised that I was slowly but surely blending in to le Connemara and starting to fall for its optician size televisions and mysterious customers. When another regular would walk in, or just someone who looked like they could be, everyone would turn and say “bonjour”. By the third visit, I was getting the same treatment, sometimes along with a handshake. I began to bet on the horses on the corner tele, and my flatmate Allison, with her equine wisdom, would give me betting tips. In one of our final visits to the supermarket tabac (although, I acknowledge that this monica belies the true beauty of the place), the white wine sipping gentleman beside us enquired as to what an earth two anglophones were doing in a town like Hazebrouck. He revealed that he had himself immigrated from Argentina as a child, and although his criticism of the french working mindset and the benefits system urked my lefty brain, I didn’t really care because there was no doubt; I was in the connemara cast.
I imagine that on my eventual return to France, I very well might have to start again as a tabac novice, and that the only way to return to my spring 2025 glory would be to go through the whole process again. Yet, I am honestly rather content with having achieved moderate tabac respectability just the once. Inevitably, I’ll try again on my study period, comforted by the knowledge that underdogs can work their way into the seemingly immovable anthropic furniture of the tabac. And, if I don’t succceed this time? Well, le connemara will outlast us all.
My intention is to publish a couple more niche observational pieces on my time in Hazebrouck. If you fancy a bit of that, I think you can sign up for email alerts at the bottom of this page. In any case, cheers for getting this far!
CoupFrank 