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.