To live in the Paris region was:

to be cast into a territory whose geography eluded us, scrambled by a maze of roads travelled exclusively by car

to be unable to escape the goods of leading brands, displayed in vacant lots or along the roads in motley strings of warehouses, on whose outer walls signs touted the oversized and the All - Tousalon, everything for your living room, Mondial Moquette, Cuircenter - and suddenly lent a strange reality to the ads on commercial radio, for home deco and DIY, St. Maclou, of course.

It was being unable to find a pleasing order in anything we saw.