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.

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.

You Win Some, You Lose Some.

Things I learned today:

1. If the fire-alarm goes off in the middle of your lesson, you can guarantee it will be raining outside. And if you set a great example to your students by following official protocol and leaving all your worldly possessions inside, a feeling of righteous smugness won’t keep you dry.

2. If you try and fit in a visit to an underground shopping-precinct in the gap between finishing teaching and getting to your French class, you can guarantee they will be renovating both the Métro station and the shopping-centre so that you can’t find the shop you want. The shop being the strangely-named ‘fnac’, which you have no clue how to pronounce, so you can’t even ask anyone. (I think it’s basically the noise you make when a bug flies into your nose).

3. It doesn’t matter which queue you choose at the cash-desks, it is guaranteed to be the slowest. In which Parisians will demonstrate a huge inability to queue normally. By which, I refer to their habit of sending their small children into other queues to reserve a place, despite the children having no idea of their role in this activity. Or the tactic of the woman behind me, who expressed her unhappiness at the queuing-time by standing far too close to me while taking the art of audible tutting to a whole new level.

4. When you finally get off the Métro at 13.50, you will inadvertently run the wrong way down the street, away from your French class that starts at 2pm sharp. When you realise your error, an insane spoof of a James Bond film will ensue, whereby you get on a random bus, travel for 1 stop, panic and get off, and then chase the bus down the road for 8 full minutes. You will then arrive at your French class only mildly late, but unable to breathe for approximately 20 minutes due to all the running.

5. You will confidently approach the coffee-machine you were scared of last week, having studied the buttons carefully and worked out how to order a standard coffee. The machine will then ignore you, fill the cup to overflowing (to punish you for not asking for a tiny expresso) and will add extra sugar, when you asked for none. Standard.

6. The highlight of your day, visiting the boulangerie that has been declared vendor of the BEST BAGUETTE IN PARIS 1998 AND 2014, will be thwarted as it is naturally closed on Wednesday afternoons.

7. Despite writing ‘toilet-roll’ on your hand and accepting the fact you will get strange looks from people all day, you will forget to buy it at the supermarket.

Things that made up for all the shit things that happened:

I’m not working this evening. I’m watching Friends dubbed into French in my pyjamas. (Tap-dancing class is un cours de claquettes).

A shit day in Paris is still a pretty awesome day.

I got to take the tram home. Which tells you the name of each stop by announcing it in both a female and then a male voice. And each stop has its own little jingle, most of which seem to have been taken from the soundtrack of a 40s detective thriller.

Red wine.

Things that have changed since I moved to Paris.

Some changes I expected. Sure. Like I would develop an amazing instinct for recalling every detail of the Metro map. Or I would discover some kind of magic brain-portal which would bring back all the French I learned at school. Or even just the ability to perform a nuanced range of shrugs.

In reality, the changes have been rather more surprising and rather less useful. Here are some details about my life now:

- I inexplicably save all envelopes from the mail and use them for writing lists and notes to myself.

- I scour the cosmetics sections of supermarkets and pharmacies for products containing Argan Oil as Parisian water is doing something a bit weird to my hair, and then I get affronted by the ridiculous price of toiletries over here and refuse to buy them.

- I am totally au fait with Danone’s entire product-range, and am involved in creating a detailed ranking system for small desserts in pots.

- I buy a real actual TV guide again. Mainly because the writing in it is quite short, and I can usually understand it.

- I am never without a 1 litre bottle of Evian. Ever.

- It’s not got Evian in it though. I obsessively fill the bottles with tap-water and chill them in the fridge in a weird system of rotation, drinking and rinsing.

- All my shopping lists end with ‘Don’t buy cheese.’

- I watch a lot more television here. Usually US dramas dubbed into French. This week I have watched the same episode of House three times. Or as they call it here, Dr [H]ouse.

- There is a polar-bear who lives in my fridge. And he is basically my new best friend who I talk to more than I talk to anyone else at the moment. And he talks back. And it’s great if I can get him to ask, ‘What are you looking for?’ and sometimes he gets angry and shouts at me to ‘Shut the fridging door!’ 

And some of you think I’m making this up and / or I’ve actually gone mad. But those of you who know me but at all know that this is wholly and completely true.

Shooting the Bamboo Goes Continental

So, I moved to Paris. For a year. To live, and work, and (hopefully) learn French.

(The jury’s out on how that will go – yesterday, my brain refused to understand a lady charging me 29 cents for a bottle of water, to the extent that she was forced to point at my handful of change saying loudly, ‘The yellow one, the YELLOW one,’ until I managed to hand over the right amount.)

And so, in the interests of trying not to forget all the important life-altering memories that I acquire here, I think I’d better write them down. For posterity and whatnot. And to confirm that I didn’t imagine them when I look back on all this in years to come.

Yesterday I was up and about early to get to an appointment with a bank manager, and successfully managed to open a bank account! Anyone who has experienced anything to do with French banking will know this is much easier said than done. Anyone who has heard the story of the hoops I jumped through to try (unsuccessfully) to open an HSBC account before I left the UK will understand I was quite nervous about the whole thing.

But it was fine. The lovely heavily-pregnant bank adviser was super-helpful and nice and, more to the point, spoke quite a bit of English. I even managed to say some useful things in French, such as ‘Is it possible to have a cheque-book?’ and ‘Which ATMs am I allowed to use?’

It was all going swimmingly.

And then I whipped out my useful list of important vocabulary and questions from my filofax to impress her. Only to find that I had inadvertently whipped out the wrong piece of paper. I was brandishing one of my ‘ideas pages’ for a writing project. More specifically, I was showing her a line that said ‘GRAPEFRUIT – forbidden if you’re on statins! WHY?!’ 

Let’s hope she didn’t look too closely.

Anyway, after my triumphant bank visit, I spent the day wandering and exploring the areas north of the Seine – Les Halles, the Marais, Bastille and then the Louvre gardens. Lovely. I took photos and sat in parks and did my best to be observant and good at noticing things.

Here is what I noticed:

1. French women wear a lot of perfume. And they’re really good at sweeping past you and leaving a cloud of it in their wake. French shops seem to pump out clouds of it from their doorways too. Not sure how they do this.

2. Place des Vosges is my new favourite place. It’s got lovely fountains and gardens for sitting. And I got to watch a troupe of 8 Dutch women elaborately set up a self-timed photograph about 12 times before they got one they were happy with.

3. I saw a man clearly unhappy with the signs that said he was not welcome to walk his dog in a particular park. He neatly stuck labels over the crossed-out pictures of dogs on each sign he came to, and then proudly marched in with his dog. A subtle protest.

4. The glass pyramid outside the Louvre would make a lovely backdrop for wedding photographs. Ah, look how happy they are, I thought, as I watched a bride and groom lovingly gazing at each other while the photographer snapped away. And then I realised the only spectator was a grumpy-looking assistant, and that it was some kind of photo-shoot. Not quite so romantic.

5. Great idea to use my friend’s Paris Lonely Planet guide to help me with my explorations. That way, I found out about some of the more obscure things to go in search of, such as the Défenseur du Temps (pictured), an elaborate clock where the eponymous Defender of Time battles a crab, a phoenix and a dragon on the stroke of the hour. I was especially excited to be there at midday, when ‘particularly lively combat’ apparently happens. 

Shame that the Lonely Planet guide is now 10 years old, and the clock doesn’t actually work anymore. Shout-out to the nice French lady who explained this to me and the other mugs waiting patiently while a posse of local pigeons smugly looked on.