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.