Winning at Easter

Last Easter Sunday I woke up early and was out of the door by 8.15am. I got on an underground train for 12 stops, got on a boat for 20 minutes, climbed up 377 steps, and there I was.

Completely on my own, the only person in the entire world at that exact moment looking out from the crown of the Statue of Liberty in N Y actual C.

Feeling very small and insignificant within the global scheme of things, but also a bit amazing and special for being there toute seule, just me and Lady Liberty, sharing the view and taking it all in. I felt a magical glow I wanted to protect, to remember in minute detail, along with an intense pressure to relax and enjoy my moment. It turns out that doing things you’ve always dreamed of doing is fraught with the panic of not quite doing it right.

And sure, the magical glow may have been largely due to a huge sense of RELIEF that I hadn’t passed out on the way up. Heights don’t bother me, but climbing up a double-helix spiral staircase where the steps are only 19 inches wide and everything’s made of metal and it’s 27 degrees outside so it’s much hotter than that in here, and the railing is just getting hotter and shinier and sweatier with every step I take – well, that bothers me.

So I make it. And by some fated planetary alignment, I’m undisturbed by other tourists and free to take as much time as I want for gazing and photographing, and regaining my composure and a normal resting respiratory rate. The sporty-looking couple who were ahead of me have been and gone, and the fanny-packed group behind me are evidently taking advantage of the rest-stops on the way up. 

Right now, in this moment, I am Winning at Easter.

Just below me in the statue’s headspace were two National Park Service employees keeping an eye on things, a man in some kind of nook (the Statue’s ear?) and a woman casually swinging her legs while sitting on a metal beam (as you do). They were lovely and helpful, and keen to chat. The man reassured me that my new obsession with the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is really quite normal, and it turned out that the woman had recently spent her honeymoon in Paris, and we swapped stories about hunting down the many and varied Statue of Liberty replicas that are dotted about the French capital. (My own ‘gotta catch ‘em all’ challenge of visiting each one is in the works. I’ll get to it when I get to it, OKAY?).

I shared my anecdote about how the statue on the Île aux Cygnes, not far from the Eiffel Tower, was swivelled in 1937 so that she is now directly facing her big sister on the other side of the Atlantic. The woman lit up at this gem, and I like to think she’s woven it into the Liberty stories she tells tourists.

Visiting the Statue of Liberty is the only thing I’d booked before arriving in New York, mainly because people kept telling me it sells out 6 months in advance and you simply must organise yourself beforehand. It’s easily the most reasonably-priced ticket I bought on my trip, just $21 for visiting Liberty Island, climbing up to the Crown, visiting Ellis Island and its incredible Immigration Museum, and hopping freely on and off 3 different ferries around New York Harbour along the way. (Please bear in mind that in New York money, I had a plate of waffles and a coffee that cost more than this; they were really nice waffles, but still).

As regular readers of this blog already know, I am nuts for GOING UP STUFF, so this was an ideal morning for me. However, if you’re not sure about the steps or the height for climbing up to the crown, take a look online for what to expect. There are go-pro videos and suchlike. And I would thoroughly recommend an early-morning time-slot, as queuing was minimal.

I saw plenty of people not even bothering to get off the ferry at Liberty Island. They were straight round the harbour to the next stop at Ellis Island, ready to get going with the hours of fascinating stories and memories from 62 years of US Immigration. Self-guided audio as well as human tour-guides, so you can take as long as you like.

That was the best thing about the whole day; there’s something for everyone, and you can tailor it to suit the time and energy you have.

This Easter, I (sadly) didn’t go up any stuff. Instead, I went to the cinema and took in some art, and then I went to 3 different supermarkets in search of cocoa powder. I eventually found some (a different kind of Winning at Easter), which is sort of hilarious, given that I now live in the UK again, and I thought my days of being a confused moron in the supermarket were behind me.

Apparently not.

Confused Moron, Party of One, signing off, and planning to be Going Up Stuff every Easter from now on.

The Grapes of Passive-Aggression

Last Friday, I went to see a play. It was one of those spur-of-the-moment, I-wonder-if-there-are-still-tickets-available situations, and there were, so I bought one and went.

Plus, it allowed me to start a project I’ve been meaning to get off the ground for some time now, the ‘When they say ‘restricted view’, just how restricted do they mean? project’ (I’m still working on the name). Will a few square feet in the corner of the stage be hidden from view, or are we talking seats behind pillars, where you’d have to be next to someone you know really well to do the sort of leaning necessary to get a decent sight-line?

Now I’m not launching this project in the name of science, you understand; it’s purely self-serving. My quest is to find, at each of my local venues, the exact location in the theatrical Venn Diagram where lowest price and most acceptable view overlap, so that I can sit in it. Don’t worry; it’s not that I’m short on hobbies and one step away from taking up raffia-weaving. It’s that I usually buy tickets when there are only 8 seats left on the only night I can go, and I want to be speedy and efficient and feel that I’m snapping up a bargain, rather than taking what I can get.

*NB. This all comes after the Hamilton-booking shit-show, where my friend and I spent an impressive amount of time considering the relative restrictedness of a £30 ticket in a £50 zone vs a £50 ticket in a £70 zone vs a £100 ticket in a £howmuch? zone, before getting so overwhelmed at the potential for expensive disappointment that we opted for unrestricted seats to save our collective sanity.

At HOME in Manchester, it turns out that Circle Row B Seat 8 for £10 is in fact a pretty good seat (view only properly restricted in one scene for approximately 38 seconds, where I just pretended the actors were having a conversation off-stage-right).

The reason I know it is a pretty good seat is that my view was such that I recognised the actress playing the drama teacher as Steph Barnes from Coronation Street, who the rest of you would probably recognise from Happy Valley Season 2 (I still haven’t watched it yet, alright), but who I haven’t seen since she was married to Des circa 1994. Recognising facial features 24 years later? That’s a pretty good seat.

The play was Circle Mirror Transformation, and it was great. Set in Vermont, over a six-week drama class in a community centre, Steph Barnes (actual name Amelia Bullmore, if you prefer) and her 4 students gradually get to know themselves and each other through the magical world of drama – they didn’t quite play Slap the Butcher, but there were some nice moments where I was reminded of Mr G.

My real treat, though, was witnessing the solo meta-drama coming from the guy next to me. It was a play within a play, Silent Angry Man, from the moment he traipsed in behind his (probable) wife, to his visible upset when he realised there wasn’t going to be an interval and kept looking murderously at those audience-members brave enough to nip out to the toilet / bar.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such quiet yet determined anger. He wouldn’t take his coat off, which was weird, but turned out to be useful as each new seethe caused him to rustle slightly, meaning I was alerted to his full litany of rage, which went as follows:

      Phase 1. Huffing and sighing.

      Phase 2. Fidgeting.

      Phase 3. Refusing to look at the stage for a full 20 minutes.

      Phase 4. Practically crying every time the cast played the game where they 

                   try – and fail – to count to ten.

      Phase 5. Frenetically tapping a leaflet on his knee.

      Phase 6. Falling asleep.

The only time he perked up was when one of the characters was talking about how he used to have a stuffed animal toy of a snake in his childhood bedroom. And the only time he acknowledged his (probable) wife was when the characters had to each write down a secret that no-one else would know, at which point he and his companion looked significantly at one another. Both of which speak to much darker things, if you ask me.

So thank you, Angry Man. I hope you figure out your unresolved issues about improv exercises and / or community centres. Or maybe I should just make a note that Circle Row B Seat 7 isn’t quite as nice as Seat 8.

An Excessively Random Act of Kindness

Funny thing happened to me today. I needed to generate a £1 coin from a £10 note so that I could use a locker at the swimming pool. Not exactly a Sherlock Holmes-level of intellectual conundrum, but nevertheless; life cannot always reflect art, now can it.

So there I am, pondering just what I can buy, that will cost between one and two pounds, or between three and four pounds, thus ensuring my handful of change definitely contains a £1 coin. I’ve upped the level of my personal maths-problem game, you see, and I don’t want to risk spending, say, 95p on a loaf of bread, and then being landed with a fiver, some shrapnel and two £2 coins. That would be a failure, leading to an awkward conversation with the shopkeeper, in which I ask if I can change one of my £2 coins for two £1 coins, and the shopkeeper looks down his or her nose at me and refuses.

I’ve worked in retail; I know that £1 coins are like gold-dust, and must not be given away willy-nilly or, indeed, if someone asks politely. They are always the first coin to run out in the till, and it is a pain in the arse when that happens. You’ve probably got to ask Jane to go and get more pound coins from the safe upstairs, which will take an age, and the angry customers waiting for their £1s in change will have started to look remarkably like villagers with pitchforks.

Also, in a land where the customer is always right (haha), you really value opportunities where you can say, ‘No, I’m sorry, I really can’t spare any change,’ when what you actually mean is, ‘I would rather beat myself over the head with this barcode scanner than open the till again to give away my tiny stock-pile of gold. Also, why aren’t you paying by card like any normal person, thus minimising the physical and verbal contact we have to have with one another.’

I digress.

So, I’m planning my £1.50 purchase of bananas or post-its from the supermarket, when I catch sight of an ON-THE-STREET BOOK STALL right outside the swimming pool building. This is PERFECT, I think to myself. Not only can I indulge my weakness for second-hand books (inherited from my dad; totally not my fault), but I’ll get my change into the bargain.

Now here is where I experienced the oddest act of kindness I think has ever happened to me. I found a great book for the princely sum of £2, presented it to the book-purveyor-gentleman with my shiny new £10 note, only to find out that he has no change either. Which is when I find myself leaving the book-stall with the book, my £10 note plus a £1 coin given to me by the book-seller, who said I could just pop back later and give him £3.

Now I’ve just moved back from France, and I’m not saying that such a thing would never happen at a French second-hand book-stall, but I am saying that I think it’s pretty unlikely. And I know that I probably looked very trustworthy and honest in my sensible middle-class trench-coat buying my sensible middle-class book about castles, but still. This bookseller really put some faith in the human race with this gesture. This was a win for people being nice and helping one another out. And while we’re at it, aren’t Northerners just the loveliest?

So there we are. I experienced altruism. I got to go swimming. And more to the point, I got hold of my £1 coin without recourse to maths or shopping; instead, I essentially stole a book and was given a pound by a man in the street.

The fact that it got stuck in the locker because the swimming-pool hasn’t updated since the new-style coins came out, and apparently I should really have kept one of the old-style ones if I ever wanted to go swimming, is neither here nor there.

I have this friend...

I have this friend, and I’d like to tell you a few things about her.

Since I’ve known her, she has lived in an edgy and cool city apartment, by the sea and in the countryside. She likes to get around.

She does NOT like bananas.

She is an adventurer, and fearless, and believes in giving yourself challenges and goals, and then setting out to achieve them. Before I knew her, she visited the Arctic, and then several years later, she went to the Antarctic. She just decided she wanted to go, and then she worked really hard to save up and plan the trip, and then she went. Also, she bloody loves penguins.

She is very thoughtful and considerate. When I moved to a new country, she sent me postcards and letters throughout my first weeks there until I settled in. She would never in a million years fail to send a birthday or thank you card. She once gave me a necklace as a gift which was the exact match to one of my favourite pairs of ear-rings. I have no idea how she found it. The next year, she gave me the matching ring, which come to think of it, is the ring I wear every single day.

She is surprising sometimes. You think you know her, and you’ve got her figured out, and then she’ll tell you she’s lived on a barge, or that she’s been camping in Utah. Or she’ll throw into conversation that time that she got proposed to on a boat in Africa.

She is the only person I know who makes her own baked beans.

She is independent, and very brave. She has started her own business. I’ve seen her talk to a lecture-theatre full of people (without the need of a microphone). And she can pull off orange eye-shadow.

She is open to any number of mad-sounding excursions. If you want to rope someone in to do an all-day eat-yourself-uncomfortable Food Tour, she’ll do it. If you’re wondering whether it’s possible to visit all 10 boroughs of Greater Manchester in 12 hours, AND visit something cultural in each one AND have a drink AND only use public transport, she’ll sign up immediately. When I recently wanted to spend a day in Manchester seeing how many bee-related things could be found, of course she was right there with me.

She is polite, to the point of foolishness. I once witnessed her eat a whole plate of aubergine parmigiana even though she HATES aubergine, just because our friend made it for her.

She is not afraid to be different. She will hold up a sign that reads ‘Où est le Jen?’ when she meets you at a train station. She will use flash-paper to make FIRE in a job interview.

She is an excellent excellent friend, and she will always be there for you. I’ve known her to travel to another continent to visit someone who needed her. And she once came to visit me in Paris with another friend when she was DEFINITELY TOO ILL and nearly passed out about 6 times. She should clearly have been at home in bed, but she didn’t want to disappoint us.

She sometimes uses words like ‘poorly’ and ‘cross’.

She believes in kindness and being nice, and helping other people. I’ve known her for almost 9 years, and she is one of the people I admire most in the world. I’m not exaggerating when I say she’s influenced the person I am, and my idea of the person I’d like to be. When I work with children, I use strategies I’ve learned from watching her. Sure, this includes understanding the value of having something you can throw at them, or doing an impression of how not to react to a fire alarm. But thanks to her, I'm better at how to talk and behave with young people (or, in fact, any people).

When she got married, she asked 7 of her friends to walk her down the aisle. I could not be prouder or more honoured to have been one of those 7. However, I'd like it to be noted that I only ever agreed to help give her away on the condition that I also got to keep her.

She is great, and I have a sneaky feeling she has no idea how great she is.

And of course, I’m writing this today for NO PARTICULAR REASON WHATSOEVER. Any significance attached to this day or date is PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

To Elf or Not to Elf?

Newsflash: My Instagram feed is no longer populated solely with bowls of porridge and pictures of the Maldives. Since December 1^st, I’ve seen innumerable photos of little toy elves involved in incorrigible high jinks in the homes of many of my friends. Hashtag investigation revealed they are Elves on Shelves. If you are as puzzled as I was, don’t worry. Here is your handy need-to-know guide.

The Elf on a Shelf is an American tradition purportedly going back decades (well, on sale commercially since 2005 at least). This festive season, the elves have crossed the pond with a vengeance, eagerly waiting to leap from the shelves of John Lewis or Tesco to those in your very own home.

The premise of Elf on a Shelf is essentially an extension of Santa’s Naughty and Nice list. The little dudes are official Scouts for the big guy, and they live in your house throughout December, spying on your child’s behaviour and reporting back to Santa in the event of any misdemeanours that might warrant Christmas being cancelled. So far, so George Orwell.

It’s simple; you buy your elf in his nice red suit, take him home, and then he gets on with his surveillance and hides every morning in a different place in your house, cheekily lying in wait while your children try to find the little scamp. Except of course it’s down to you to cultivate belief in the ‘hotline to Santa’ side of things, and it’s you that will come up with all these inventive hidey-holes. Maybe not quite that simple after all.

Oh, and there’s a complicated bit about how you don’t actually own the elf, you’re just adopting him, and so the retailer who sold him to you should in fact be referred to as an Adoption Centre for Elves. And your elf is nameless, so you have to complete an online elf registration form in order to get an official Elf Adoption Certificate. Hmm. Anyone else hearing those Trumpian ‘special registration database’ alarm-bells ringing?
 

Not being a parent myself, I am constantly amazed at the lengths you have to go to in order to entertain, educate, morally guide and supervise your little ones. I assume I’d welcome any help available in the candy-cane-sugar-fest build-up to Christmas, and so initially, I admit, the idea of handing over behaviour management to a Santa Scout for a month far outweighed my concerns at any police-state undertones.

The tricky part is that in addition to an already-busy morning routine, parents have to arrange for the elf to be surprised in the middle of some exciting elfy shenanigans. Going from my Instagram evidence, this could mean he is poking about under the Christmas tree, doing a keg-stand with a bottle of Aunt Jemima’s maple syrup, or being part of a complicated skit involving some Duplo characters and a digger performing a heist on a biscuit tin.

Impressive and an absolute hoot for the kids, sure, but the level of ingenuity required to keep this up throughout December strikes me as immense. It’s the Christmas Eve palaver of planting mince-pie crumbs and sherry dregs in your living-room, not to mention shards of carefully-strewn carrot outside the front door, except you have to do it for twenty-four nights in a row.

Who will remember all the various japes your elf has got up to by the time you hit week three? You probably won’t, but you can guarantee your children will. Disappointed cries of ‘But Daddy, he’s already hidden in your sock drawer,’ must haunt the dreams of elf-owning parents across the land.

Tbh, it seems the majority of elf-shelf-enjoyment is being had by grown-ups that don’t even have children. That’s certainly the impression you get from perusing #naughtyelfonashelf threads on Twitter. (Warning: do this at your peril). These elves, getting themselves into scrapes involving Barbie strip-clubs and marshmallow hot-tubs, have clearly forgotten their brief of filling in report cards and carrier-pigeoning them back to Santa. Heck, by the number of elf-sized miniature liquor bottles being emptied, I’d say they’ve forgotten which direction the North Pole is.

I'm slightly confused by the shelf part of the whole operation, the suggestion presumably being that one’s elf is to be found each day on a different shelf. There are only 4 shelves in my entire apartment, and one of them is the high-up kitchen shelf where boxes of matches and my knife-block live. If I had kids, elves would only be invoked as part of darkly modern fairy tales that illustrate why the phrase ‘keep out of reach of children’ exists.

Are care-givers across the country spending this month endlessly debating the health and safety implications of placing an acrobatic elf on a bathroom shelf, where he’s abseiling down the hairdryer flex, or hiding in a fort made of aspirin bottles.

 

And when you run out of shelves, what then?

Actually, it seems that the shelf aspect of things isn’t all that critical. The Tesco product description of our elvish playmate suggests that he can sit ‘on the mantelpiece, table or even nestled in the Christmas tree.’ See, not a shelf in sight. Might as well call him Elf that’s Just an Elf.

My research led me to several reviews from parents who embrace the elf, and the power he wields. Notably, the single mum of 6 who praises the elf for keeping her sane and turning her children into angles (although I query the sanity and fatigue levels of someone who can’t spell angels).

However, many families are not fans of the elfdom. It’s just too fraught with stress. The playground competition of ‘their elf does more interesting stuff than our elf’ is a level of parenting critique that no-one needs. And life is far too short to ever be involved in a fight with a co-parent where your line of argument is that ‘it is completely inappropriate for Naughty the Elf to be hiding with his head poking out of the toaster.’

So, toy companies, bravo indeed. You’ve succeeded in creating the must-have toy of the festive season that sold out before December even began. I trust that you have a contingency plan for the middle of the month, when the parents and pitchforks descend, demanding that their shelves go back to being elf-free zones.

And as for the elves, I can only hope that they are receiving adequate wages and benefits for such gruelling 24-hour surveillance shift-work, and not just being fobbed off with vague whisperings of ‘Indefinite Leave to Remain’ and a bushel of sugarplums.


[Photo By An Errant Knight - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41334323]

Attack of the Wooden Mouths (or, how hangovers are different in your 30s)

By ori2uru - originally posted to Flickr as champagne tower, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5236607

On Sunday morning, I opened my eyes very slowly.

I was expecting the terrible sensation when your eyelids are stuck together and you forgot that they might be, and then you realise they are and your body half-heartedly tries to prepare itself for bright lights and the onslaught of gravity, while your brain attempts self-preservational shutdown by refusing to find out what might be going on behind all the blurry vision-fog and eye-glue.

You see, on Saturday evening, I went to two parties. Two parties. This is not the sort of social gallivanting that I generally get up to (query to self: have I ever done it?).

The first was my Work Do (very Parisian, in the sense that there was very nice free champagne until it all ran out and was replaced with questionable white wine), and the second was the Christmas party of my lovely Italian/Canadian friends (very Parisian, in the sense that there was very nice champagne all night. The sort that comes in the incredible extra-large bottles that are my favourite, but that are also very heavy and difficult to pour out of, so it’s altogether better if someone else does it).

Now, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t sink 15 glasses of champagne and get completely hammered, as the Jen at Christmas Parties of Yore would have done. These days I am (mostly) civilised and a grown-up. (NB. We won’t mention the Negroni-fuelled fiasco the night before these same Italian/Canadian friends got married in July).

But over the course of a delightful evening, I did drink quite a lot. And I probably deserved at least a bit of a hangover. Or, as the French so aptly put it, a gueule de bois, a mouth of wood.

Yet on Sunday morning there was not a headache or a spinning room in sight. I got up, ate porridge with seeds and goji berries, and smugly went about my day. This is fantastic, I thought; I’ve finally cracked it. Champagne is my drink. I’m never going to drink anything else again.

Unfortunately, that is not the end of my story.

It turned out the gods of the Wooden Mouth had other plans for me.

First up, I went to a lovely fancy oratorio choir concert that my friend Pam was performing in. I sat with two other friends, we enjoyed the beautiful music, and then we all went off to get the Métro together, feeling wonderfully cultured and stuffing our faces with mince pies as we discussed which station we hate the most. For me, it’s Châtelet Les Halles, hands down, which was ironically the station we were heading to.

And that’s where my troubles began.

My magical Métro pass, which I love and which makes my life reasonably-priced and easy, didn’t work. The gate didn’t slide open when I beeped, so when I re-beeped, I initiated the angry-sounding DOUBLE BEEP ALERT noise. Leaving me trapped on the wrong side of the barrier to my friends.

My brain could not handle this unexpected development at all. It was Sunday, so naturally all the ticket booths were closed, and there was not a single staff-member to be seen. My subconscious started heading towards a group of camo-wearing machine-gun-toting soldiers as the only available figures of authority in the vicinity before I stopped it. What did I think they could do, shoot the barriers down to let me through?

I wandered aimlessly around the station for a bit, and then sent a pathetic ‘Save yourselves. Go on without me’ message to my friends, before realising I no longer had any idea which of the 94 different barriers I was supposed to be trying to get through (there are many excellent reasons why Châtelet is the worst station).

Eventually, I beeped my way through 3 different barriers at random and I think the system let me rejoin my friends out of sheer pity.

To recover from all this, we went to have a festive drink and a welcome sit-down at Starbucks. Where I forgot my own name.

I was busy practising saying ‘gingerbread latte’ in my head in a French accent so that it would be intelligible for the nice French barista (it didn’t work; I had to repeat it six times before we got anywhere). And when she asked my name, poised to write it on my cup, I went completely blank.

Most of my students believe I’m called Jan or Jane, so part of me was excited to rectify things ever so slightly and get this right. And then I heard my friend Jo somewhere to my right declaring that her name was Hélène, and I realised it would be simpler to just say a more normal French name. But I couldn’t think of any of those either.

I said Jen. She wrote Jan. I said, No, no, with an ‘e’. So she wrote Jane.

My friends went on to have dinner that evening, but I decided to quit while I was (not at all) ahead. As I was walking home, a group of people asked me the way to the Opera House. They spoke French, but with Spanish-sounding accents, so I was overjoyed to not only understand but also to be able to answer their question. Of course, I declared confidently, it’s down that street. About 10 minutes’ walk. You’re welcome.

It isn’t. It’s precisely the opposite direction from where I so airily pointed. I’m sorry, Spanish tourists. Please google a picture of the Opera House; it really is beautiful, and well worth a visit.

I’m self-imposing a one-party-per-night limit from now on.

Two Years Deep

Friends, it’s been two years. Two whole years exactly that I’ve been in Paris, embracing my status as happy, often-confused, often-idiotic, foreigner in town.

Today is a fairly unimpressive day. I taught a private class this morning, for which I had somehow accidentally suggested the French electoral system as the topic. Then I bought a swimming-hat – bonnet de natation, if you’re interested.

But yesterday. Ah, yesterday. Yesterday was an excellent Paris day, so to celebrate my two year Paris-aversary, I thought you’d like to hear about it.

It kicked off with my favourite activity, GOING UP STUFF. After two years of recommending that all friends and visitors sack off going up the Eiffel Tower and instead go up Tour Montparnasse, I finally went up the thing myself. And, boy, was I right. There is no queue, you get to the top in a magically-smooth elevator which takes just 38 seconds, and then you are at peace to enjoy spectacular panoramic views (which, dur, include Lady Eiffel herself) without being elbowed incessantly or wanting to throw yourself off the top just to escape the 18,000 people around you who can’t form an orderly queue. And you get to take photos like this one. It was superb.

Then I did a spot of shopping. I spent an hour in San Francisco Books, looked at about a million books and managed to only buy three. I visited the shop of Henri Le Roux, the man who invented salted caramels, and managed to only buy four. And then I nearly bought a CAPE, before getting enraged at the counter by how long I was having to wait, and flouncing out of the store. I have never felt more Parisian. 

(NB. Well, it was labelled ‘cape’ but was really a cardigan with holes for sleeves. And if I was really Parisian I would have explained in a loud voice to no-one in particular why it was completely unacceptable to expect me to wait that long before doing the flouncing out. But it was as Parisian as I’m likely to get.)

Then I went home and read some more of Harry Potter 6 in French. I’m so close to the end. My deal with myself is to finish the whole series within two years of starting, so I’ve got until September 13^th. And I might actually do it, as I no longer have to stop every eight words to look something up (dungeon = cachot, half-blood = sang-mêlé, golden snitch = vif d’or etc. etc.). It’s all going swimmingly.

I spent the evening with my friends Pam and Steph, who I didn’t know from Celine Dion two years ago. We drank champagne and bitched about the 37-degree heatwave that has descended on Paris this week and discussed our favourite skincare products that you can buy in a pharmacy. It was all so very, well, French.

Then on the way home, I went the wrong direction on the Métro, which I have never ever done before, and which made me feel like a sheepish Paris moron. Because a little humility never hurt anybody, and sometimes Paris just needs to remind you that she's the boss.

In Your Face, Willy Fogg

Mesdames et Messieurs, Ladies and Gentlehobbits. Lend me your ears and stop the presses. It is my half-birthday, and it is also exactly 20 months ago today that I moved to Paris. The planets are aligning, and I can practically feel the insightful clarity and profound observations raining down…

I’m not entirely sure what’s up with time these days, but I presume there’s been some meddling by the little science wizards over at the Theory of Relativity’s centennial birthday party. Perhaps they’ve put a kink in the continuum, and things are speeding up. Either way, 20 months has gone by in a flash.

Here are a few things that I have learned in that time.

Living in a different country, practising the great arts of settling in and successfully talking to people and buying stuff, are incredible skills, and I am sincerely pleased that [most days] I have them.

I have discovered reserves of patience and tenacity I had no idea I possessed. I am referring in equal measure to the hoops I unblinkingly and repeatedly jumped through in order to get my Social Security card, as well as the day I opened a tin of coconut milk using only a knife. I essentially spent 38 minutes grinding through the can and then cooked a Thai curry that tasted of steel-dust and VICTORY. (It would have taken approximately 9 minutes to go round the shop to buy a tin with a ring-pull, or an actual tin-opener, but that’s NOT THE POINT.)

My life has subtly changed in other ways. Square pillows, for example, are normal to me now. I also spritz my face every morning with Zinc spray, and that’s normal too. I know more types of cheese and wine than I ever knew before. I only buy newspapers from huts on the street and when I go to the cinema, it gets fully, properly dark and a tiny cartoon miner named Jean flings his pick-axe to signal the start of the film. The light in this city is remarkable, and gives the world a glow that I hope I never take for granted.

Last week, I was fortunate enough to have a week off. I held my very own stay-cation, which I like to call Around My World in 8 Days.

It was ferociously jam-packed (well, it was intended to be, but then I realised that full-time adventuring is actually quite tiring so I incorporated a couple of days of sitting). 

So, as I was saying, it was somewhat jam-packed, and included such exciting episodes as the Annual Parisian Cherry Blossom Festival (complete with Japanese drumming and dancing spectacle), my first Bloody Mary, a day spent exploring the forest of St-Germain-en-Laye, a foray into the largest flea-market in Europe, a series of delightful lunches, dinners and desserts, and cinema excursions to see Truth and The Jungle Book.

I often spend time with my friend Kate, usually after a carafe or three of Côtes du Rhône, fretting about such things as why haven’t I bought a house, why are shoes so expensive here and why can’t I get to the end of Harry Potter 5 in French?

But on days like today, when spring is in the air and I get to go to an exhibition of 700 Barbie outfits this weekend, I feel that life is pretty good.

Interestingly enough (or not; you decide), this is not the first time I’ve mentioned my half-birthday on this blog. The last time was in 2013, when I waxed lyrical about my grand scheme to spend the next 8 years learning to make paella and then regaled you all with a trip to Birmingham. Exciting times.

I also shared with you my secret dream-life, in which I become a writer living it up in New York by the time I’m 40.

Well, here we are. It’s 3 years on, and I’m revisiting my goals, as any self-respecting, list-making Filofax-owner worth his or her salt is wont to do.

I could be lamenting the fact that I am still as yet unpublished, spending euros not dollars, and I have not the faintest clue how to make paella. And yet I’m not.

Perhaps one day I’ll be living in the Big Apple (obviously, if that’s the case, I’ll be much cooler, wear sunglasses in lofts and will only ever casually call it ‘the City’), and perhaps I won’t.

Either way, I’m not worrying about it. I’m still getting to know the person I am and where I belong. And that’s fine by me.

If you have a house, or a baby, or a cat or a budgie, or a career or family, that motivates you and challenges you and that you love and that drives you, ALL POWER TO YOU. And massive congratulations from me. I couldn’t be happier for you.

If, on the other hand, you have struggles or shitty things going on at the moment, I’m sorry. I hope you have a support-network and a good supply of kit-kats to get you through. And get through I am sure you will.

For a while there, mortgage-less and not a budgie in sight, I was FOMO-ing all over the place, worrying that there were things going terribly wrong in my life journey.

And then I calmed the fuck down and realised one or two wise things. Vis à vis, the following...

The upbringing I had, the lasting friendships I’ve formed, and the people I gravitate towards in life, have all encouraged me to be interested and engaged and curious, to read widely and avidly, and to be eclectic and diverse in my tastes. So what if that means my apartment is a pile of books I’m in the middle of, I have a whole host of mad Parisian challenges on the go, and I have frequent anxiety because there’s just not enough time for all the television. (But what about Empire? What about Mozart in the Jungle? What about Dickensian?)

I’m extremely happy to be interested by the world and its stuff, to be inspired by the superb array of people that I know and love, to be a bit of an explorer.

And so, as I look back over the past 20 months and those recent adventure-filled 8 days, I say Tchin! Here’s to whatever’s next.

Postscript:

It occurs to me that I’ve never read the actual Around the World in 80 Days. The Jules Verne version is currently queuing up on my Kindle, downloaded in a flurry of guilt. 

The first page seems to include a rather long and anally-retentive description of precisely-folded shaving-towels for one’s toilette and having tea and toast served at 8.23am precisely. To be honest, this is not the adventure-tastic tale I imagined.

I know the protagonist as a tall and rather dashing lion called Willy and not Phileas, and I believe his butler to be a cat named Rigadon and not some dude named Passepartout. Other details I recollect from my childhood include a goat in a wheelchair, a creepy wolf with a glinty eye, a mouse named Tico who is obsessed with his tiny sun-dial, and a mysterious personage known as The Brigadier, who was, you’ve guessed it, a deer. Bravo, animators, bravo. I have literally just realised how clever that is.

If you don’t know what I’m on about, may I please refer you to the 1980s and one of the coolest TV shows ever made, Around the World with Willy Fogg. Available on DVD now.

You’re more than welcome.

Second moulin to the right and straight on til lunchtime

I like a good challenge. Any follower of past escapades such as #GM10 or Drinking the Snail can testify to that. I particularly enjoy challenges that didn’t previously exist and that no other idiots before me have embarked upon.

At brunch a couple of weeks ago, a new challenge was born, with the most self-explanatory name yet, Paris without a Map. Hashing out the details took the best part of 5 hours of face-to-face meetings between the participants, an extensive email thread which includes the phrases ‘I think you should be allowed to run but not to take a bus,’ and ‘It is a Sunday after all and therefore dedicated to relaxation.’ I also had various suggestions from friends and family. (For ‘suggestions’, read sceptical comments such as ‘You’re doing what?’ and ‘Oh god, not again.’)

In a nutshell, the rules were thus:

2 brave teams would travel in a subterranean manner to their respective starting-points. Over the next several hours, each team would race to the rendezvous-point finish-line with ABSOLUTELY no map / GPS assistance, whilst completing various check-ins and tasks devised by the opposition on the way. A complicated points system was established, and there had to be a possible route of between 9 and 9.5km.

Impartial adjudicators (my friends Ana and Will) selected the teams, by drawing names out of a hat. ‘Names’ being pots of UHT milk, and the ‘hat’ being my hands. George and Jen vs. Pam and Olivier.

Each team held a preparation meeting before the big day. Pam and Olivier went first, and so did all the serious point-setting for easy, medium and hard challenges. George and I asked ourselves important questions like ‘We can get them to go outside Paris for part of it, can’t we?’ and ‘Where would be the best place to get them to do an impression of a bat?’

My Paris A-Z goes everywhere with me, so I was somewhat nervous at leaving it at home that morning. I googled how to make your own compass, but the requisite magnets and shallow vessels of water weren’t really feasible at short notice. And I thought I was onto something with a vague memory that you can orient yourself using the nave of a church, except that there are about a million churches in Paris facing every which way, and I barely know my apse from my elbow.

You don’t need to hear the details of how we wasted valuable time buying chocolates shaped like rabbits and lambs, or visiting a Belgian cultural-centre-slash-épicerie for no reason at all. Or how we spent ages looking for wild fish and a macaron company headquarters, both to no avail, and took a series of entirely unnecessary photos of bus-stops.

The important thing is, we achieved. We accosted tourists and made them take selfies with us. We took a composite image of the Moulin Rouge in the past and now. We found a specific type of German high-speed train. My personal high-point of the day was George frantically making an about-turn signal at me and hissing, ‘Not down there. There’s a bishop blocking the way.’

To cut a 14.8km journey short, EGG-O ENER-J (clever Easter-themed Jen-George anagram team-name) lost. Amazingly, there were only 9 minutes in it. Our elated selfie in front of the Philharmonie de Paris building is full of victory and sunshine, now sadly tinged with defeat as, unbeknownst to us, Pam and Olivier had arrived moments before and nipped to the toilet.

I’m choosing to take the high road and not quibble about the fact that one of our challenges was not achievable or that there was an ‘on-foot/as-the-crow-flies’ miscommunication somewhere along the way.

Instead, I prefer to see Paris herself as the loser; being without a map was ironically the least challenging element of the day. Not once did I feel lost or disoriented. Seeing the Arc de Triomphe side-on or using the shape of the lake in Parc Monceau to gauge directions, and assessing distance using the faraway sight of a particular Métro bridge on line 2, made me realise how well I know my way around these days.

I have realised whilst writing this that all these ridiculous challenges have involved me enlisting entirely different friends each time to take part, which I think proves that you all secretly want to do them. If you know me, and haven’t yet been roped in, watch this space. I’m sure to be harassing you soon enough. Future projects currently being workshopped involve finding all the original water fountains in Paris and something to do with the classic Meg Ryan/Kevin Kline movie French Kiss.

It’ll be first come, first served, so you’d better get your name down asap.

Paris Jen

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting down to dinner in the middle of Slovenia, and my friend George raised his glass to make a toast. ‘To Paris Jen,’ he said, and then proceeded to say very nice things about being proud of the way I’ve settled in, found friends and learned where stuff is.

I’ve been thinking about Paris Jen. Here are some key things about her:

• I have a membership card so I can have lunch in the basement of Madeleine church.
• More often than not, I eat dinner at 10pm or later.
• Sure, I’ve been to the Louvre. But I’ve also been to the Immigration Museum, the oldest orthodox theological institute in Western Europe, and the spot where Edith Piaf’s boyfriend used to rob young women.
• I know where you can get a 3€ pint of beer. (Up the Mouffetard. Once you inadvertently get stung for a 12€ beer, you learn this stuff).
• I have a 4^th favourite Parisian church.
• I once went to Sunday Night Dinner in an apartment where Samuel Beckett used to hang out, where I met a woman whose parents painted Gertrude Stein and where I talked to a strange man obsessed with the architecture of Boston.
• I always carry a corkscrew and plastic cups in case I need to drink wine by the Seine at short notice.
• I know where there is a Japanese pagoda that is also a cinema and I can take you to a shop that only sells drawer-knobs and antique lanterns.
• My French is oftentimes still a crock of shit, but I am gradually clawing my way towards progress. I have sent back food, sent back wine, been to the doctor and the hairdresser, and read a whole actual novel, as well as making it to season 3 of a French drama series that I also gave a presentation on in a French class. Not too shabby.
• My to-do list includes going to the arts centre that used to be a jazz instrument factory and the Museum of Counterforgery.
• I glare at tourists, and idiots who don’t know how to behave on trains.
• I know my way around pretty well, partly from walking a lot, partly because of my ace A-Z, and partly because I once spent an awfully long time on the Métro going to all 20 arrondissements in one day.
• I’ve learned that one of my favourite things in the world is going up stuff. So far, I’ve been up the Pompidou Centre, the Eiffel Tower, the temple in Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, the hot-air balloon in Parc André Citroën, the terrasse of Printemps, the Institut du Monde Arabe and the clock of the Musée d’Orsay.
• Last night I had dinner in the café used in the film Before Sunset. And we sat at the exact same table. I'm practically Ethan Hawke.

 Today is my Paris-a-versary. Exactly one year ago, I arrived in this amazing, beautiful, fascinating, exciting one-of-a-kind city. It’s pretty incredible to look back on my extraordinary year.

I’ve made brilliant new friends, learned amazing things and had a shit-ton of fun. I’ve lived on my own for the first time, dealt with bureaucratic madness in a different language, found out much more about what kind of person I am, and fallen in love with this beautiful place.

I’m sitting here in the apartment I moved into last week, listening to French jazz on the radio – I shit you not – and watching the rain that hasn’t stopped all day. I’m drinking coffee that I brew much stronger than I used to, and considering that I just need to take up smoking gitanes to fulfil a ridiculous cliché.

I’m writing a list of possible activities to do with my friend Charlotte who lands later. So far it reads, ‘Swedish Institute Secret Garden? Rabbit costume art show? Algerian food? Ice-cream cones of Chantilly cream? The cocktail place with the free peach wine?’ (Good luck Charlotte).

And you know what, I think to myself, life isn’t half bad. Well done, Paris Jen, I’m proud of you too.

21 Days Later

Exactly one month ago, I finished teaching a ridiculous spate of intensive classes, the highlights of which included Savage Garden’s ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply’ and footage of Steve Irwin as valid and extremely relevant teaching devices. 

I celebrated my freedom, not by going out and getting wonderfully drunk, but by getting up at 6am the next morning to start my Summer break.

Over the following three weeks, I took 19 trains, 6 buses, 2 planes, 4 cars, 1 boat and 1 hot-air balloon. I travelled to England, Slovenia and Toulouse, and had friends visit me in Paris.

I caught up with pretty much all of my very best friends and family, and had an absolute blast. And you know what? It was all so freaking EDUCATIONAL. I learned so damned much. My horizons are broader, my eyes have been opened wider, I've gleaned knowledge with a capital K.

Not one to be selfish, I thought I’d share. Here, in no particular order, is the best of all the shit I found out this summer:

1. In Ljubljana, there is a superb water fountain in the shape of a kangaroo, so fashioned that in order to have a drink you have to snog the kangaroo. FUNNY.

2. Swans make a sound EXACTLY like a dinosaur if you dare to go near them or sit next to their lake or, you know, look at them.

3. French people like opinions. So, if you should find yourself sitting next to a French person on a 5 hour TGV train journey, be prepared to talk about the weather, the police, international train timetabling, sandwiches, the Royal Family and educational systems of the world.

4. Those small tubes of toothpaste you get on planes or as free samples from the dentist are WORSE THAN USELESS. And whatever is in them tastes revolting and IS NOT TOOTHPASTE.

5. Slovenia has more wasps than anywhere else in the universe. They will try to live in your beer and sit all over you. To protect yourself, you should wear red trousers and hang a paper-bag from a nearby tree.

6. I watched a video about how to tie the shoelaces on my trainers. Seriously. Look into it; you need to create a ‘heel-lock’. LIFE-CHANGING.

7. I watched for shooting-stars and meteor showers from two different locations (Lake Bled summer tobogganing slope, and the very beautiful arse-end of nowhere in Southern France); apparently it’s in your peripheral vision that you will see the action because that’s where you detect black and white.

8. I thought I was getting more independent and sure of my own mind as I get older; then a tiny old Slovenian woman broke me down and forced me into a rowing-boat in 20 seconds flat. I am WEAK.

9. There is a tiny sleepy village in France where nothing happens all year, except for a couple of weeks in August when 250,000 people come to the Marciac Jazz Festival. It was incroyable.

10. Not much in Slovenia will kill you. In fact, the doctors say you only have to worry about snakes if they BITE YOU IN THE FACE. And the scorpions are so laidback that hospitals don’t even bother to carry the anti-venom. SUPER.

11. Paris has the world’s biggest hot-air balloon, and you’re more than welcome to go up in it for 10 minutes to admire the view. You are not, however, allowed to take your ice-cream. But if you smile nicely and complain a lot, maybe they’ll make an exception. So when you then drop it, you’d probably better scoop it off the floor of the basket and eat it anyway, right Daisy?

12. At a clog-maker’s workshop in the Pyrenees (YES!), I learned about some special regional clogs with impressively long pointing-up toe bits. They used to be weapons of war but are now mainly used for dancing.

13. Slovenians are the best at naming flavours of ice-cream; collectively, we tried Cream Cake, Bled Bell Ringer and Grandma Cream.

14. My friends are great. They had amazing stories to tell me about Peru, Rome, San Francisco, Africa, Vegas and Japan, not to mention newly-hatched travel plans for Sri Lanka. They’re all busy being super and successful, starting businesses, raising tiny babies, getting promotions, buying houses, being pregnant, and I’m incredibly proud of all of them.

15. Don’t get me wrong. They’re also completely mental. One of them confessed to compulsively tidying up public toilets when he’s in them, another gets a daily email to tell her what NASA are up to, and one spent most of his childhood in an imagined world peopled by Lion-O from the Thundercats and most of the Transformers. And it turns out that in 2 couples I know (who don’t know each other, incidentally) the boy makes an unusual bird-call sort of a noise to attract the attention of the girl when in a busy environment like a shop. Sure.

16. Most of all though, I realised how fricking creative and interesting my friends are. Thanks to them, I’ve debated the ins and outs of the SheWee, been privy to 2 dystopian screenplay-plots that I hope get written, and learned about Disney imagineers, cheese-storage and Louisiana voodoo.

Guys, THANK YOU all for 21 amazing days. I am infinitely wiser and happier due to every last one of you.

The Weekend of Living Randomly

My weekend was basically 3 days of bizarre.

You’ll be forgiven for thinking I spent 50 hours in a wormwood opium haze and that this is all made up, but I promise it isn’t.

Mostly as proof to myself in years to come that it wasn’t a dream or a Wes Anderson film, here is what happened:

- I had my first Parisian theatrical experience – Dirty Dancing: the Musical. In French, no less (songs in English, thank goodness – Les yeux ont faim might have been a bit much). My personal highlights included Baby’s real name inexplicably being Frederic not Frances, and all the ushers incessantly telling me to ‘Enjoy the Spectacle.’ Alright, already.

- Naturally, I got home wanting to watch the film. It’s not on Netflix but luckily Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights is. Phew. Perfect opportunity to play ‘Spot half the Mad Men cast’, and get obsessed with Cuban music. (Have listened to approximately 19 hours of Radio Cubana since Friday. Currently playing - Spanish version of 'I Will Survive' sung by a man).

- For the first time this year, I found myself not teaching for 10 hours on a Saturday. YES! Not wanting to waste a moment, I channelled my inner Ernest Hemingway and explored the fancy 6^th arrondissement. Literary salons of yore, sneaky hidden parks and streets full of shops selling meringues BIGGER THAN MY ACTUAL HEAD. In one of said sneaky parks, I successfully took my first panoramic photograph and had a wee in a PUBLIC TOILET. Where you had to STAND UP. A dual sense of achievement.

- I found the building where the 3 Musketeers used to have clandestine meetings. Which led me to realise that mousquetaire is hands-down my favourite French word.

- I bought my first ever beetroots.

- I visited the 17^th arrondissement for the first time, to go to a party held by my new Swedish friend Hanna from French class. Don’t worry, I googled ‘Is the 17^th safe?’ and took along my friend Kate for backup. And it turns out, it is safe, and Swedish parties are great (you take your shoes off, and everything’s white and from Ikea, and then there are drinking games).

- I saw my first mouse in the Métro.

- Sunday was the first of the month, which in Paris means one thing – FREE MUSEUM DAY. Forget the Louvre, never mind the Pompidou, and you can keep your Rodin. Me and Pam went to the Museum of IMMIGRATION. Which was in fact super-interesting and culminated in a perfectly-mustardy croque monsieur. And there’s an aquarium in the same building, which may or may not have crocodiles. Who knew? Although that part wasn’t free, so I didn’t get to go in.

My horizons well and truly broadened, I learned LOADS this weekend. Vis-à-vis, the following:

• A Pimm’s Champagne Cocktail is ‘the perfect drink for those who are about to begin an uncertain journey.’

• If you turn your socks inside out, the seams won’t piss you off and you’ll be more comfortable. Incroyable. (Thanks Kate).

• ‘I carried a watermelon’ in French is ‘Je portais une pastèque.’

• Under General Franco, bikinis were illegal in Spain. Word.

Please feel free to use any or all of these pearls of wisdom at your next dinner party.

Like a native.

Yep, that's how I speak these days. Like a native. Well, a small 4-year-old one.

My French has come on leaps and bounds, and I can now converse with the best of them. Or I could, if it was appropriate for me to hang out at kindergarten.

Don't believe me?

Back by popular demand, here is what I wrote for my exam in a recent French class, translated back into English for your reading pleasure.

For the sake of context, I was given a series of pictures and had to write 3 stories to explain what was happening in them.

STORY NUMBER 1:
This is Jacques. Once, he was a very important businessman. He had lots of responsibilities and lots of employees. Every day, he used to go to work very early and he used to return to his house very late. He had a very thick moustache and he was quite fat.
Then something marvellous happened. Jacques won the lottery and he received a lot of money. He stopped his job. He took a big journey to India.
There, he started to practise yoga every day. He climbed on 3 mountains. He didn't know why he still had his moustache, because he hated it. So, he shaved it off.
Now, Jacques lives in India. He eats lots of fruits and vegetables. Thanks to yoga, he got thinner and now he is not fat and he is the happiest man.

STORY NUMBER 2:
10 years ago, Pierre worked in a supermarket and he lived at his parents' house. He was sad because he wanted to find a girlfriend. More than that, he had a big dream: he wished to become a baker, the best baker in France!
He made a big decision. He moved house. He left the house of his parents and he went to Paris. He enrolled himself in a college for bakers.
He met another bakery student. She was called Sandrine. She could make all the types of bread.
There was a competition to discover who made the best baguette. Clearly, it was Sandrine, and the same day, Pierre asked her to marry each other. She said yes!
Now, they are the owners of a very famous bakery and they have 3 children.

STORY NUMBER 3:
Madame Bertholde lives in a small very picturesque village in the north of France. The village, which is called Villeneuve, is situated in a very pretty region with lots of hills and in the middle of a small forest. The village has some shops, a church and a cafe. There are only 300 inhabitants.
In 2080, Villeneuve will change a lot.
About 10,000 people will live in Villeneuve. They will dine in lots of restaurants and they will go to the cinema or the theatre or to the stadium to watch a football match - because all these possibilities will be possible in Villeneuve in 2080!
There will not be a forest any more because of all the big buildings and houses in the town.
Madame Bertholde will be dead before 2080, but her grandchildren will still live here.
In fact, the grand-daughter of Madame Bertholde will become the mayor of Villeneuve in 2082! She will do lots of great things.

Mon horloge va vers arrière. Or, learning a language turns back the clock.

Happy January folks! My 2015 resolution of BE BETTER AT EVERYTHING is going well. I’ve just had a very productive morning.

Job 1: I successfully located the little grey plastic funnel dishwasher-attachment-thing, thus enabling me to refill the dishwasher salt for the first time. Having been given extremely specific instructions on maintaining all household appliances in the apartment I’m renting, I even watched 3 different youtube videos on how to use said funnel to insert said salt before copying the whole process VERY CAREFULLY. Don’t worry – there’s supposed to be some weird water in there already, and it’s supposed to take a surprisingly large amount of salt to fill the thing. DISHWASHER MAINTENANCE COMPLETE.

Job 2: I continued my mission to use increasingly more coffee and increasingly less water in my coffee-machine. My goal is to see how far I can go before the stuff that comes out would technically be termed mud.

Job 3: French homework. Instead of doing this in a 15-minute rush before my French class on a Wednesday, this week I am grown-up and mature and doing it 2 days in advance in a neat and organised fashion. This week, my homework was a written composition about how I spent New Year, using at least 20 verbs and at least 2 past tenses.

I’ve just finished. It took ages. I drank all the coffee and shouted at Google Translate three times, but it was worth it. I was feeling pretty smug by the end – I’ve used the word ‘twinkle’ for goodness’ sake, and 3 (that's right, 3!) reflexive verbs.

And then I read it back to myself, and realised that when I write in French, I sound like a small child. I have completely regressed. I should probably change the dots over the i’s into small hearts for truer authenticity.

Don’t believe me? Here, for your amusement, is the English translation of what I wrote. On the plus side, it doubles as a blog entry about New Year, albeit through the eyes of a 9-year-old (who drinks champagne).

My New Year's Eve

I spent New Year’s Eve in Paris. After Christmas, which I spent at my parents’ house in England, I went to London. When I arrived in London, I met my friends at St Pancras Station. It was the day before New Year’s Eve.

On the 31^st December, it was cold, but it was also sunny. So, we went to the Jardin des Plantes and we walked about. After that, we visited the Evolution Museum, which is a museum in the Jardin des Plantes with lots of information about Natural History. The panda was my favourite animal.

Then, we walked to the Arab World Institute. There, we climbed up to the ninth floor to see the magnificent view. It was awesome!

Later, we were walking in the Jardin des Tuileries when the sun set. The sky had lots of different shades of pink and purple. Suddenly, the Eiffel Tower started twinkling. It was perfect!

That evening, we returned to my house, where another friend joined us. We cooked a traditional cassoulet, we drank champagne, and for dessert we ate a Christmas Chocolate Log. On the log, there was a small model of Father Christmas. It was the first time that I saw Father Christmas holding an axe! 

It was a really cool New Year’s Eve!

A Brush With Death

Today I got my cheveux couped. That’s right kids, a haircut. Exciting times.

Now me and my hair have never been the best of friends, so spending an hour in front of a mirror being forced to look at someone else who’s being forced to deal with it is not one of my favourite things to do.

And then there’s the small-talk. And the challenging task of saying yes to a coffee (because it’s free) but then having to drink it without moving the position of your head, all before the hairdryer blows thousands of tiny hairs into the mug.

And now imagine doing all of that in French.

Yes. Exactly.

After 4 months here, my French is still basically rubbish. So I sensibly spent a bit of time researching the situation online. For your own sake, please never google anything remotely like ‘Paris hairdressers just a trim’. There is a very large, very dark part of the internet filled with horror-stories about trips to French hair salons. Most of which are variations on, ‘She just kept hacking away at it and refused to listen to me’ or ‘She did the whole thing with just a RAZOR’.

Apprehensive, I asked people for advice. My friend Kate just shook her head and jabbed furiously at the pony-tail she’s been sporting recently; apparently, a recent victim of the hacking-away treatment.

Then I asked my friend Steph, who’s lived in Paris for years. She’ll know what to do, I thought confidently. Not so. It’s very hit-and-miss, she said unhelpfully. You just have to go into one and hope for the best.

Then she added, Just don’t ask for a petit coup, because that means sex. Super.

And as an afterthought, she said darkly, And whatever you do, if they offer you a swan, say no.

And so this morning saw me nervously entering World Cut armed with a picture of Rose Byrne growing out a fringe, and a post-it reading ‘Trim = une coupe d’entretien. Stop = Arrêtez.’

Don’t worry. It wasn’t so bad. As the hairdresser pointed out, my hair is really very thick so all the hacking-away she did hasn’t left me scalped. But the experience was markedly different from getting a hair-cut in Britain. Par exemple:

1. My idea of what I wanted was incidental. The first 10 minutes involved Hairdressers number 1 and 2 umming and ahhing like speculating builders, shaking their heads about the chances of putting in an extension. My French might be pretty crap, but I could follow their conversation, which included some great phrases:

We need to put in more movement here.

You have quite a long face, you know.

You last had it cut when?

Did you know the top half is a different colour to the bottom half?

Oh look, here are a few little white hairs.

I helpfully contributed that there’s a certain part of my forehead that I don’t really like, but they weren’t really interested. Even the little old lady having her highlights done next to me joined in.

2. Turns out a swan is a soin, a conditioning treatment that costs an extra 15€. Pah, no thank you (merci Steph).

3. The add-ons didn’t stop there. If I wanted any mousse putting in, that would be 8 further euros. I opted for a regular blow-dry, un brushing, thank you very much.

4. And the brushing was the strangest part. The whole experience had been quite Edward Scissorhands throughout, blades and bits of hair flying about enthusiastically. But this was something else; I’ve never seen such violence expressed with a hairdryer. If she was Rod Hull, then the hairbrush with my head attached was Emu trying to attack her.

In fact, I presume this was excessive even by Paris standards, because the manager marched over shouting ‘What are you doing?’ and took over. She was equally brusque, but seemed less angry about the whole thing. I was just starting to feel part-proud, part-relieved that the whole thing was nearly over, when she said, ‘Hmm, frizzy. This bit’s very dry.’

And hairdresser number 1 chipped in from across the room something which I didn’t hear, but which undoubtedly meant ‘That’s what you get for not having a soin’.

Cultural acclimatisation rituals for the day = 1.

Soins = 0.

Celebratory pains au chocolat consumed = 2.

Relief at not having to visit the hairdresser for at least 3 months = priceless.