There’s a new brothel opened up in Paris. In the haughty 14th Arondisment. Well, nothing new there then, French, sex, prostitutes… plus ca change, non? But this is a change. Because this particular brothel has no women. No girls. No hags even. Just dolls. Sex toys. You pay… well, I’m not saying ‘you’ in any accusatory mode, obvs, but you pay your 89 Euros and you get an hour with the post-millennial version of a blow-up doll. And they’re trying to work out if this is illegal. As prostitution is (ironically, bizarrely) illegal in that fine nation. Which in fact clarified its position on such matters in 2016 when it became a criminal offence to pay for sex, but not to charge for it. So basically, you sleep with a prostitute, she says ‘zat iz 100 euros, monsieur’ and you do a runner. She can charge but you can’t pay. Common sense.

The new ‘brothel’ is claiming that it is not in any way prostitution, all its doing is renting out ‘toys’. Toys for the boys. Which is a logic you can’t really fault.

If I was a French prostitute (and its not for lack of trying, I promise you) I’d be royally pissed off about this place. Its demeaning. And it says a lot about FRENCH men, that they’re just happy to fuck something, regardless of what that something is. A melon with a hole bored in the side would do.

Bloody French! (Although they already have such places in London too apparently, Barcelona and, obviously, Amsterdam.

So you see, in matters of the flesh, even plastic flesh, we’re on song with our (temporarily) European counterparts. We’re all on message. Singing from the same song-sheet. United, solid, together-forever, BFFs. On important matters. Like blow-up dolls.

On slightly bigger issues, like the (allegedly) state-sanctioned murder on foreign sovereign land with totally illegal substances, we’re not quite so ‘together’. Well, most are as we all damn Putin and his cohorts (or puppets) for his probable actions and pathetic denials. And as the anger and recriminations heat up, no less a person than Jean-Claude Junker, the (hateful) president of the whole EU, sends Vlad a congratulatory letter in all sycophantic sincerity and slimy groveliness for winning the ridiculously rigged election in Russia on Sunday. I mean, WTF?? I’d have voted for the blow-up doll.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx