Let's Have a Big Round of Applause for...

I attended my friends' wedding last week and, although it was a lay ceremony, several elements of it resembled the traditional Christian format: for example, the venue - a splendidly elaborate Unitarian church. At the end, when they walked down the aisle newly-wed, we broke into a round of applause. It seemed the thing to do at the time but, on reflection, I'm not so sure it was. I think of applause as being a form of reward for the efforts of those who have earned it - people who win races, sing arias or otherwise excel by honing their skills in order to achieve remarkable things. Newly-weds don't really qualify on these criteria.

In the course of traditional weddings conducted in church, behaviour is prescribed according to the ceremonial format: everyone is told exactly what to do and guests are not encouraged to deviate from the script. There are no spontaneous gestures except for discreet smiles and nods towards the bride and groom as they pass up and down the aisle. Congratulations are given personally, outside the church. But with more relaxed formats evolving, there can be ambiguity as to how we, the guests, should express our congratulations. If there are no instructions we must ad-lib as best we can. It would be helpful if someone would compose a special song - a bit like Happy Birthday - which we can all sing together at the end of proceedings. I so want to do the right thing.

The next day we were on the London train for a scheduled stay in Hampstead. I had earlier read a newspaper article entitled Another French Bakery Opens in Hampstead which explained that this proliferation is due to the increasing number of French people who are choosing to live there. Since a disproportionate part of my time is spent grumbling about the poor quality of the bread available in shops and trying to track down the real stuff, i.e. made with good flour, additive-free and slow-risen, this constituted a good-news story for me as well as the émigrés. The French may have their weak points but baking is not among them.

We alighted at Hampstead tube station and made our way to the lift among a gaggle of young French people. Emerging on to the busy, sunlit street the first sound we heard was that of a busker playing the accordion. He was wringing out the kind of sentimental tunes which I always associate with the soundtracks to those old, black and white films set in Paris. He might have been wearing a beret and a neckerchief - or I might have imagined it. All around us was the exuberant sound of French being spoken, interspersed by occasional fragments of conversation in our native tongue.

 And there were the bakeries, three of them within a hundred yards (or perhaps I should use metres) of where we stood, their showy window displays flaunting their foreign origins and shaming their dowdy neighbours. I imagined the manager of the faux French Café Rouge nearby growing daily more anxious about his declining takings.

I feasted visually on the pastries, tarts and gateaux meticulously arranged in symmetrical, colour-coded arrays. I planned a delicious picnic hamper full of fare selected from the stacks of baguettes, rolls and croissants artfully slit and stuffed generously with cheese, charcuterie and salad.

And then there was the bread, piled into wicker baskets, stashed into wooden cubby holes or perched on the counter-tops: white sourdough, sourdough with 15% rye, wholemeal for toast, spelt with sunflower seeds, walnut and apricot boules, pain de compagne and olive-stuffed sticks. If I were a spontaneous person I might have burst into delighted applause.