How to live like a Parisian

I wanted to hate it. In the weeks leading up to my trip to Paris, I was told incessantly about how much of a dump it was, about how I'd be faced with overflowing bins and skilled pickpockets. I was even warned against drinking the tap water. 

According to some, to be properly British means hating the French. And there's plenty to take against: rude waiters, deliberate incompetence in maintaining their side of the Channel crossing, awkward double-cheek kissing, obsessiveness about cheese, astounding corruption in farming subsidies. My trip to France had one rule: do not enjoy it. Do not let them win.

But I have a confession to make. It wasn’t long before I realised that perhaps not all elements of the French character are détestable. With every meal out, with every stroll down a boulevard, I slowly began to realise that maybe they aren't so bad after all. As much as it pains me to say it, Parisians do life better.

Soon after arriving, I headed out for a cocktail at a nearby café. Yes, a café. In the morning they do espresso and croissant, at lunch it's chèvre chaud and a glass of sauvignon. And in the evening? Very reasonably priced cocktails and a cigarette counter in the corner, open until at least 1 a.m. Still not impressed? It was a Thursday. A school night! In London it’s nigh-on impossible to find anywhere open after 11 p.m., even in Soho. If, somehow, you manage it, there'll be a passive aggressive barman acting as if he’s offering you the winning lottery numbers by conceding to serve you one last drink (£18, please).

And what about the patrons themselves? The young professionals and happy middle-aged couples chatting, smoking and drinking well into the early morning? In Britain, too much of that kind of behaviour and you'd be having a stern word with yourself in the mirror, fretting that you must have a problem. For the French, this is their culture. Why feel shame about chit-chat and chablis? My generation seems to think there is a moral superiority in going home after work and watching Netflix.

Even if you manage to get over your Protestant hang-ups, London’s nightlife is dead. Sadiq Khan’s war on fun has seen to that, ably abetted by his night tzar, Amy Lamé (salary: £85,000), and her inability to fulfil her task of making London a 24-hour city. Soho, which was once the envy of fun-seekers across the world, is broken beyond repair. The West End is filled with neighbourhood groups proudly undermining the very essence of a city.

The Soho Society, a residents' association, is a particularly wicked example. Log on to their website and you’ll see a message asking those living in the area to fill out a ‘sleep deprivation survey,’ due to ‘concerns' over 'disturbed’ rest. One might assume they’d have no trouble nodding off during all those hours they spend poring over planning applications and licensing requests looking for reasons to oppose them. Or they could, you know, move to Richmond.

This just doesn’t exist in Paris. Nimbyism was overcome in the Noughties when the national government centralised a lot of the planning rules. Residential obstructionism was brought to an end as the French decided, quite reasonably, that if you want to live in a city you might have to put up with a few more people and a bit of extra noise. The national government can now impose fines on localities, overrule local zoning plans that are too restrictive and even seize land, transferring it to developers for additional housing.

The French have a realistic approach to living in cities; they seem to accept that yes, you will occasionally hear some noise between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. But in return, you get to live in a city that behaves like a city. Flexibility around closing times mean there's no mad scramble for last orders. The grown-up drinking culture is just as much the result of relaxed drinking laws as the cause. Treat people like adults and more often than not they'll behave like them.

It's difficult to understand just how rubbish British nightlife is until you venture out on the continent. Try ordering dinner past 10 p.m. in any UK city and you'll usually be laughed out of the restaurant: 'Kitchen's closed mate, the chef left an hour ago.’ We like to think of our capital as a global metropolis, a world-defining mega-city: Tokyo, New York, London. But the truth is that London's nightlife is not much better than that of a provincial town. The French, meanwhile, have a bit of joie de vivre. Mon ami, it's time to don our berets and crack open the pinot.