Bars de Lille - Episode 2

It got to about 8:30 this evening and I thought I wanted to go out for a while. The unavoidable “4 walls closing in” syndrome which, I imagine, afflicts everyone who lives alone, at least once in a while. I went out but it was soon pretty clear that whatever I wanted to get away from for a while had been brought with me to the bar and I was no happier there than here so I decided it would be cheaper to come back to the apartment.

It’s no reflection on the bar I went to. The bar “Autrement Dit” on Rue Royale in Vieux Lille has loads going for it as far as I’m concerned. The first time I was there was in 2003 when, along with 5 others from the UK office, I spent about 4 days here in Lille as part of an International “welcome to the organisation” event. It was the nearest thing I’d had to a foreign holiday in about 8 years so I made the most of it and never spent any more time than necessary in my hotel room.

It wasn’t until several weeks after I’d moved to France and several visits to Autrement Dit later that I realised that this was one of the places I’d been to in 2003. It seems like twenty years ago now and I can’t relate my opinion and usage of the place these days to the wide-eyed, over-romanticised image I had of it back then. In 2003, it was a very different environment from that offered by evenings in Leeds. To a naïve newcomer, it was exotic, strange and very, very French. Now, it’s just the local bar.

Except that it’s more than that. Having struggled out of the womb in ’62, I was still a teenager when punk came along and I was certainly the right age to enjoy all the electronic, new romantic delights of the eighties in England. I was never extraverted enough to dress up and make up etc but I really hooked into the music of the time and I still love it now. Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Tubeway Army, Human League, Ultravox, Japan and all the rest. I loved it. I was an aspiring keyboard player myself and I revelled in all things “synth”. Autrement Dit resounds to those sounds and the more modern music inspired by them and, in there, you'll seldom hear anything else.

There was a trend, in 90s England, for pubs and bars to be lit up like ice cream parlours and I always shunned those places. Lighting plays more of a part in our enjoyment of things than we realise and I’m pleased to say that Autrement Dit is usually very dully-lit, like a bar should be.

The proprietor and staff know me well and I’m always happy not to need to ask for a drink when I enter a bar. They know what I want and, as I walk through the door, someone usually starts pouring it. When it’s quiet, this is just a fun gimmick between staff and regular but, when it’s six-deep at the bar at 11:30 on a Saturday night, it’s an absolute godsend. There are usually 3 people serving at any given time but, in total, there are 5 staff who rotate. When I walk in, whoever is “on shift” that evening will always smile, say “good evening” and shake my hand. It’s a far cry from Leeds. I like being there, they like seeing me there and, behind much of this is the fact that these guys enjoy what they do. They take pride in being good bar staff and the enlightened customer recognises and appreciates this. This is an important difference between the UK and France. In the UK, being a waiter or a barperson is a job and it’s usually a job taken under duress by a student or epidemiologist until “things get sorted”. Here in France, the people who fill these positions are professional, proud and, for the most part, duly respected. A good waiter has an understanding of menu and clientele alike and he or she will take pleasure in advising you and in knowing how to bend the menu to suit your needs. A good barperson will tell you what you want to drink when you can’t decide and he’ll enjoy seeing you enjoy what he’s given you. It’s more or less a lost art and a “non-profession” in the UK but, here, there are experts and they’re worthy of respect.

I’ve been told, by certain residents of Lille, that Autrement Dit is a gay bar. Ok, so some of the bar staff are slim and there’s the odd sequined T-shirt to be seen but the clientele is always very “boy/girl” (apart from me, of course…… I usually tend to be in the “boy/nobody” category). I suspect that this gay bar notion is driven by T-shirts, fairly techno music and the fact that French guys often still greet one another with a kiss on both cheeks (face) and I don’t really buy into it. Admittedly, I’ve seen much more guy-to-guy cheek-kissing there than anywhere else but I went to a party at one of my neighbours’ apartments a few weeks ago and he and his girlfriend both gave me a two-cheek welcome when I arrived so it would be daft to read too much into this greeting etiquette. Besides which, I care far more about how decent, friendly, intelligent and open a person is than I care about where he harbours his boat. Not my concern and certainly not something which could make me alter my opinion of anyone, upwards or downwards.

So we have a nice place, nice welcome, great staff, pleasant clientele, great music, appropriate lighting, they know what I want to drink and then, we have the real “dealmaker”.

If I ever found myself needing to get myself home on all fours (never happened yet) I could crawl home from Autrement Dit in about 10 minutes. In my normal largely vertical orientation, we’re talking about 4 minutes.

Good local amenities and facilities…. You can’t beat ‘em!