Our Man in Paris: A not so magical kingdom

After a five-year rearguard action of heroically mean-minded stubbornness, I have been defeated at last. I took the children to Disneyland Paris. By sticking close to my five-year-old daughter, I managed to avoid all the scary rides. Grace and I spent the day on the attractions "not recommended for people under the age of one".

It was not quite my first exposure to Disney-dom. I went to the original Disneyland in California 12 years ago and visited the new (crushingly dull) Walt Disney Studios movie theme park, in Paris, when it opened in March this year.

Given the sweet vulgarity of the Disney Corporation's parallel universe, my first reaction on each occasion was one of pleasant surprise. Everything was more tasteful than I expected; or, rather, in the light of the opportunities for bad taste that a Disney theme park offers, everything is more restrained than you have a right to expect.

After a while – seeing the submissive 70-minute queues for glorified roundabouts, ghost trains and roller-coasters – I was reminded of the Christmas that I spent in a Center Parcs holiday resort in France a couple of years ago. I wanted to make contact with the escape committee and tunnel under the wire. If the people running the Soviet bloc had been more imaginative, they could have made a lasting success of the Communist system by making it more like Disneyland.

A universe in which one simplified world-view is relentlessly imposed; in which all national cultures and folk tales are rewritten to fit a preconceived pattern; in which people are deprived, or relieved, of all initiative and choice; in which pleasure is rationed by endless queuing; in which the food is disgusting: such a world, it seems, need not be a failure.

Disneyland Paris attracts 12 million people a year, making it by far the most successful tourist attraction in France, with twice as many visitors as the next most successful places, the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. Disney has invented commercial totalitarianism. There are few benches in Disneyland Paris and none of the pleasant areas of lawns and flowers that exist in most other theme parks. Once inside the Magic Kingdom, you are expected to rush from one queue or one shop or one overpriced fast-food stall to the next, spending money and Having Fun. Children apart, no one looks very happy, but plenty of adults come on their own, over and over again. Disneyland has one of the highest recidivism rates among parks of its kind.

Disneyland reminded me of that wonderful cult 1960s TV series, Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner, in which lobotomised holiday-makers disport themselves in a proto-Club Med on the North Wales coast. But, strangely, the spiritual dangers of theme parks were pointed out by St Walt himself. One of the Disneyland rides that I took several times with Grace (only a 40-minute queue for a five-minute trip) was the Pinocchio ghost train. In a scary part of the ride, Pinocchio and the other children are sent to the sinister Fun Island, as they are in the Disney film version of the story. The children spend their time playing on roundabouts and roller-coasters (no queues) until they turn into donkeys.

The French sociologist Gérard Mermet, in a new edition of his marvellous book Francoscopie published this month, divides 21st-century humanity into three categories: mutants, mutins (mutineers) and moutons (sheep). "Mutants" are those people – mostly young, mostly male – who thrive in a globalised world that is constantly changing and where taste is simultaneously personal and international. "Mutineers" are those who wish to hold on to the more familiar rungs of traditional and national culture. "Sheep" (the majority) avidly consume global culture but have, at the same time, a vague sense of bewilderment and loss, which can easily be exploited by demagogues and the media.

I expect that I'm a mutineer – but one so awkward that I detest my fellow mutineers.

PS: I admit it. My children adored Disneyland Paris.

If you know the locals, they're great. If not...

Parisians are the rudest and kindest of people. Everything depends on whether they know you or not.

In French schools, children are encouraged to bring in a cake on their birthday. My wife and I stayed up late one night last week trying to fashion a cake, or finally two cakes, from odds and ends of cake mixes and flour. The result looked, and tasted, like a couple of mouse-mats, but we decorated them with several tons of Smarties, and Grace, whose fifth birthday it was, appeared satisfied. The only problem was getting the cakes to school. My car was parked miles away.

I decided to take the Métro, with two cakes and two small children, in the morning rush hour. The last time I tried anything so daring, the other passengers were charming. On this occasion, they gave no quarter. I was shoved and elbowed in and out of two crowded trains, finally holding the cakes on a tray high over the heads of a carriageful of frozen faces.

The cakes survived. The teachers in the school claimed later to have enjoyed eating them. "Did you also make the Smarties yourself?" one teacher said. "They were especially good." This is the French idea of a joke.

Just as I was contemplating emigration, the bossy woman in my regular sandwich shop – a woman who harries unknown foreign customers mercilessly and who has met Grace once – insisted on giving me a pretty porcelain box and candleholder for her birthday.

A picture of you on my mail

On French postage stamps, pride of place is traditionally taken by Marianne, the young woman in a pointy hat who symbolises the French Republic, or by some other local hero.

No more. Anybody and their dog can now be represented on a valid postage stamp in France. You, too, can have a personalised set of postage stamps featuring your own face, or your own dog, for just €9.20 for a set of 10. That is only double the normal rate.

All you need to do is to send €9.20, an order form and a photograph to: Timbre Perso, BP 106, 24051 Périgueux, CT Cedex 9, France.

For further information and an order form (bon de commande), phone 00 33 5 53 03 19 56.

What philatelists will make of this, I have no idea. The long-term value of postage stamps is determined by their rarity. How much will a stamp (one of only 10 made) showing the face of Jean-Jacques and his dog Blanchette be worth in 20 years' time?