Notes from Paris

Immediate and pressing reasons to go back to Paris:

1. It’s raining here
2. Last week I forgot a passé composé conjugation of the verb prendre
3. I was sent a reminder that my Velib card is about to run out
4. I need a haircut
5. Did I mention it’s raining here?

Cliché

A lovely thing about being back in the UK is my new-found pastime of putting together paragraph upon paragraph of advice for friends and acquaintances planning trips to Paris. In Paris, I would laugh my cliché every day: I loved sitting alone at the little table in my apartment, throwing open the windows which gave way (at one point) to a perfect row of red geraniums, writing to friends about the sheer joy of sitting alone in my apartment in Paris. I let myself be a little nostalgic, for home and for nothing in particular, just so I could appreciate my own cliché a little more; so I could see it through a film lens: I was living in Paris with an increasingly kick-ass haircut. I was Amelie.

The first time a friend told me she was going to Paris, I thought I’d better sit down and type some advice to her out of duty. And then I started typing, and I couldn’t stop. I gushed about how she must go to the Musee D’Orsay, that she could cross the river, passing through the tunnel where the man plays bad jazz on a saxophone, and wander a little to the left to the Musee de l’Orangerie. Monet’s Nymphéasare still exhibited in the very space which was purpose built for them in the 1920’s! After seeing the other Impressionists at the D’Orsay, you can close your eyes and imagine it is 1927, a few months after Monet’s death, when that exhibition was first opened to the public. Jeez, she was only going for the weekend. A boat tour would have done it.

It was around the umpteenth paragraph that I realised I wasn’t really writing all this stuff for her, out of the goodness of my heart. I was writing it for me, for my memories, and for my new cliché: The London girl with the slightly less kick-ass haircut, sitting, writing alone about the nostalgia of her Paris days. In my Prologue, at the beginning of all of this, I knew my relationship with Paris would linger even after the end, though it still feels strange to be sitting here on the other side.

From here on in…

So, what becomes of the blog now? I hear you ask. Well, I may be back in London, but over here I’m French-er than a croissant au beurre, and I hope to continue writing as such. I still have some stories to tell, and when those dry up I‘ll go in search of some more.

Nearly 300,000 French people now live in the UK, so further blog-worthy stories are entirely possible. I’ve already started seeking out those Frenchies. I follow them onto tube carriages, go to French film screenings, hang around Kensington…

And while I’m infiltrating the French communities of London, I’ll be loudly complaining about the quality of the bread/ wine/ cheese we have over here. Because a blogger is not a blogger without something to whinge about.

Lastly, I’ll also drop in a healthy dose of nostalgia. Paris was never difficult to romanticise but further away it looks ever more beautiful. I’ll hold on to that image with all my might, as I once again look for a future I can’t yet see.

Let me linger on the side before I jump in.

Hanging on to Paris makes one feel it’s possible to go back; it’s possible to retreat and jump back into bed with the life I left. The blog, therefore, will also be an unashamed outlet for that nostalgia, as frankly, my friends have just about had enough…

The Return of Two Bags

There’s been a silence in my blogosphere of late. For those of you who don’t know, I left Paris at the beginning of February and retraced my steps back to London. I never meant for it to be so cyclical. I didn’t mean to stay for twelve months, to go back to London, to come in and out of the same two train stations with the same two bags. It just happened that way, in the blink of an eye. Which is why it’s been difficult to sit down and write about it – this perfect circle I never imagined it to be.

A little over a year ago, I left a sensible job in an industry I love to move to Paris. I moved mostly for adventure, to challenge myself, and perhaps a little for love. I wanted to learn things – French, mostly – but also things I couldn’t have predicted; things that come with adventure, challenges and love under a different sky. And learn I did; bucket loads of stuff. Not as many verb conjugations (I winged a lot more than I thought possible) and much more about the merits of learning in general. By living in a different language my brain got used to working all the time. It was so satisfying to get something wrong one day, learn it that evening, and get it right the next. It’s almost like starting again – being reborn into another language and watching doors open as you learn more and more about how to express yourself.

Sometimes they would be small gains. I’d confuse the veg man one day and be joking with him the next. (That can come from knowing the nuances between different types of pumpkin.*) Other times I’d chat long into the night with friends – for the first time not running out of words; chatting about emotions and opinions and politics, not about what I had for lunch.

On nights like these, I felt Paris tentatively giving me a piece of its heart, like I’d always wanted. And I wanted to reciprocate, I really did. So I tried to put down some ties. I went through my address book, tried to meet people who might one day give me a real job. I went to job interviews; I talked and I talked about my relationship with Paris and my adventures so far. And each one asked me how long I wanted to stay. And I couldn’t say; I still had so little to rely on, so little to hold on to. Eventually the meetings and interviews and lunches petered out, and I still hadn’t put down any ties. No one had offered me a job, and I felt as if I was floating. I had lived a whole year without my own space, hopping around, sub-letting rooms and avoiding my student loan.

Then an opportunity arose for me to move back to London, out of nowhere. Before I knew it I was back on the same train, with the same two bags. My bags had changed their contents almost entirely, but they were the same two bags nonetheless. Perhaps it’s a good thing that I bolted and left no baggage behind; baggage would only have made it harder to leave. The perfect circle I never imagined, contained my first taste of France, and I hope not my last.

*A citrouille and a potiron, since you ask.

Language must suffice.
First, it doesn’t. Then, of course,

it does.

— David Baker, from “Murder“  (via proustitute)

Tiny Little Heads

Lots of people come to France, or indeed go to other European countries, in order to learn a language or to just soak it all up. They make it look so easy. They usually ‘crash’ with people, apartments turn up, they find some cushy job teaching English. Woah: stop. As you know, I tried teaching English. Firstly, I was scared out of my wits by the Trunchball-esque methods of the place. Secondly, I realised the hard way that teaching English is not at all ‘cushy’. That, or I just didn’t have the gift.

Granted, it may be different teaching adults, as I for one had the little ones. And by little, I mean little. These guys start school when they’re just shy of three years old. As a child-less young person, I suppose I was naïve as to what a three year-old actually does. Here’s a refresher: nothing; they are capable of absolutely nothing. They occasionally do cute stuff, occasionally their sentences make sense and you get a rare glimpse of what’s going through their tiny little heads, but the rest of the time your task as a responsible adult is to follow them around making sure they don‘t kill themselves. Because otherwise, they probably would kill themselves. Sticking fingers in plug sockets, picking up sharp objects, displaying little or no motor control; perhaps all these things at once.

My job, as the English Teacher, was to immerse them in the English language. But I quickly realised they hardly have enough comprehension of French in their tiny little heads to survive in the world, let alone the capacity to understand another language. (I’m going to use the term ‘understand’ lightly here, because I learnt in my four months of teaching that sometimes the little tricksters do understand, but just choose not to respond or give any sign of comprehension, thus breaking down any hope of the communication that usually comes as a result of mutual understanding.)

It was as if they could smell my fear, because quite soon, I had lost every scrap of default authority one might expect from being at least 5ft taller than everyone else in the room. Before I knew it, I was on my knees, pulling apart the fighting ones, dodging flying crayons and picking up the mess they left in their wake. But I was OK with that. I was even OK with a light punch in the nose. What really got me was a below-the-belt linguistic blow. When I was introduced to the rabble, I was ‘Madame’, as is normal for any half-respected teacher. Once I was on my literal and proverbial knees, I was ‘eh! L’anglais!’. (Hey! English!*)

Incidentally, this blow was a double-edged sword. Not only am I nameless, but the construction above is the masculine form of ‘English person’. So much for ‘Almost French’.