Paris, where merry-go-rounds are labelled "la belle epoque"
Paris. It was perfect, pretty much. I am home now, waiting for my washing - very prosaic, I know - and thinking that I don't want to go to school tomorrow, bah, and it's now March and life is probably going to pick up speed again soon, but that was perfect: the briefest of interludes, and all I needed and wanted. shimgray and I went down to London on Friday evening, running down after school and work and trailing socks and Scotch eggs, and went down to Wimbledon to apotropaios' Loft of Wonder, and presumed on his hospitality and met lazyclaire, who is sweet and charming and has a robust sense of humour (I tried regaling her with tales of Jon's past lurid adventures, and she'd either heard them before, or cheerfully mocked him for them; I entirely approve). And I would've been happy with floorspace, but Jon accommodated us very happily on an astonishing inflatable airbed, which was comfortable as long as you lay perfectly still, and somehow we made it to morning without capsizing and even so I dreamed of sea-spray and Spanish gold. (I have been reading more Aubrey-Maturin. It's a theme.)
London at eight o'clock on a Saturday morning, clean and clear; then St. Pancras, gleaming glass and chrome, and poetry set in stones in the ground, and then the Eurostar, which is a very ordinary train, except they ask you for your passport on the way in, and they give the annoucements in French and then English, and then you drift off to sleep in dull Kent fields, and the train coasts gently on, and you wake up and the pylons are different shapes, and the cars on the other side of the road. We arrived at the Gare du Nord about two hours later, and it was bright, several degrees warmer, and we walked into Montmartre through blazing sunshine. That evening we made the pleasing discovery we were staying in the shadow of Sacré-Coeur, more or less; you could see it, stepping out, and somehow we ended up wandering through backstreets in the dying light, tearing at a baguette and turning corners to see the city down the slope of the hill. It was a cliché, yes. But it was beautiful.
(I was impressed, especially that evening but later as well, that between us, we managed in French. I think we have about the same command of it, but remember different words and constructions, so managed to get to a vague place of tourist competence. (Of course, this meant a lot of "Excuse-moi, est-ce que je peux avoir... er... there is supposed to be a noun here, isn't there?") Shim was more confident, I had more words. We did all right, and even spoken announcements started to make sense after a while.)
And the oddest thing was, I slept like the dead. I didn't wake up until much prodded the next morning, and fed good coffee, and then we went out into the city again, and while it would be an expensive way to solve the problem on a long-term basis, it was still a great relief. Somehow or other, that morning, we ended up in a bird market. As in, a market where people were selling budgies and canaries and parrots and macaws, as well as a sprinkling of chinchillas and rabbits. It was surreal. We wandered, around Notre Dame (but didn't go in - I thought it might be sacreligious for atheists on a Sunday morning). in and out of boulangeries, and paused a moment to reflect on the true ugliness of the Pompidou Centre (it is not as ugly as it was when I was in Paris last, at which point I think it had grass on it) and continued, eating pains aux chocolats, to the Louvre (where it was not warm enough to jump into the fountains, although I was sorely tempted; Shim was concerned at the sheer quantity of armed police wandering about) and then south to Montparnasse. I kind of wanted to see the catacombs, but eventually realised I am either too young or too old for underground racks bones, and settled for the graves of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, covered in roses and metro tickets.
More sleeping like the dead, after that. It was good. We had dinner in a small, family-run restaurant somewhere in Montmartre, where they fed me a salad the size of my head, and filled with smoked salmon. It was honestly a transcendental eating experience. There was something of the transcendental, or at least the quietly ethereal-that-comes-from-drinking, about the whole evening - I am not used to pitchers of red wine with dinner, but tipsy and giggly is the best way to see a city by night, I think, jumping over cobbles, and we paused for ice-cream and more wine and meant to be sensible and retire after that, but I was feeling quietly wicked and drunk and dragged Shim up to the Basilica du Sacré-Coeur, running up the first few flights of stairs and then giving up and walking the rest, laughing and scaring the respectable Sunday-night Parisians. The view out was spectacular, generic city-after-dark with jewellery-box of lights, but seen through a joyous haze. On the way down, we gave up on the idea of being sensible and I discovered the joys of cassis. At length, we realised we had euros, but no change. "It's not a crime, tipping badly and being drunk," I complained, but Shim hid a five-cent coin under a napkin and we ran, falling over ourselves on the cobbles and everything was stil transcendentally lovely. (I was pretty drunk. I'm a pretty drunk.)
This morning I had a hangover which I entirely deserved. We went, therefore, to Shakespeare and Co., an English-language bookshop next to Notre Dame, which has all the things I love in a bookshop: nooks and crannies, towers of bizarrely-ordered books, passages too narrow to pass, books stacked up on the stairs, small stickers saying "Howl if you love City Lights", a dog. (Who seemed to be the only French-speaking member of staff - at any rate, she was mostly addressed as "Colette, attendez!", whereas the rest of the staff were cheerfully English and Australian and American.) We bought books. The only thing I brought back from Paris, other than biscuits, is Delta of Venus. Unrepresentative, maybe, but with something of the appropriate whimsy.
I am about to return to sleeping like the dead. As of today, or yesterday, or some other day - maybe we shouldn't have picked the only day in the year that doesn't come every year - Shim and I have been together for a year. We've done things. We've ambled tipsily around Montmartre. We've clambered over college roofs and chased cats and pondered matters serious and spent whole days reading and dozing and stood on the Royal Mile making fun of statutes of Hume. Last week we started a small kitchen fire. I don't have much I need to say about it, except, this is how life is, how it ought to be.
London at eight o'clock on a Saturday morning, clean and clear; then St. Pancras, gleaming glass and chrome, and poetry set in stones in the ground, and then the Eurostar, which is a very ordinary train, except they ask you for your passport on the way in, and they give the annoucements in French and then English, and then you drift off to sleep in dull Kent fields, and the train coasts gently on, and you wake up and the pylons are different shapes, and the cars on the other side of the road. We arrived at the Gare du Nord about two hours later, and it was bright, several degrees warmer, and we walked into Montmartre through blazing sunshine. That evening we made the pleasing discovery we were staying in the shadow of Sacré-Coeur, more or less; you could see it, stepping out, and somehow we ended up wandering through backstreets in the dying light, tearing at a baguette and turning corners to see the city down the slope of the hill. It was a cliché, yes. But it was beautiful.
(I was impressed, especially that evening but later as well, that between us, we managed in French. I think we have about the same command of it, but remember different words and constructions, so managed to get to a vague place of tourist competence. (Of course, this meant a lot of "Excuse-moi, est-ce que je peux avoir... er... there is supposed to be a noun here, isn't there?") Shim was more confident, I had more words. We did all right, and even spoken announcements started to make sense after a while.)
And the oddest thing was, I slept like the dead. I didn't wake up until much prodded the next morning, and fed good coffee, and then we went out into the city again, and while it would be an expensive way to solve the problem on a long-term basis, it was still a great relief. Somehow or other, that morning, we ended up in a bird market. As in, a market where people were selling budgies and canaries and parrots and macaws, as well as a sprinkling of chinchillas and rabbits. It was surreal. We wandered, around Notre Dame (but didn't go in - I thought it might be sacreligious for atheists on a Sunday morning). in and out of boulangeries, and paused a moment to reflect on the true ugliness of the Pompidou Centre (it is not as ugly as it was when I was in Paris last, at which point I think it had grass on it) and continued, eating pains aux chocolats, to the Louvre (where it was not warm enough to jump into the fountains, although I was sorely tempted; Shim was concerned at the sheer quantity of armed police wandering about) and then south to Montparnasse. I kind of wanted to see the catacombs, but eventually realised I am either too young or too old for underground racks bones, and settled for the graves of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, covered in roses and metro tickets.
More sleeping like the dead, after that. It was good. We had dinner in a small, family-run restaurant somewhere in Montmartre, where they fed me a salad the size of my head, and filled with smoked salmon. It was honestly a transcendental eating experience. There was something of the transcendental, or at least the quietly ethereal-that-comes-from-drinking, about the whole evening - I am not used to pitchers of red wine with dinner, but tipsy and giggly is the best way to see a city by night, I think, jumping over cobbles, and we paused for ice-cream and more wine and meant to be sensible and retire after that, but I was feeling quietly wicked and drunk and dragged Shim up to the Basilica du Sacré-Coeur, running up the first few flights of stairs and then giving up and walking the rest, laughing and scaring the respectable Sunday-night Parisians. The view out was spectacular, generic city-after-dark with jewellery-box of lights, but seen through a joyous haze. On the way down, we gave up on the idea of being sensible and I discovered the joys of cassis. At length, we realised we had euros, but no change. "It's not a crime, tipping badly and being drunk," I complained, but Shim hid a five-cent coin under a napkin and we ran, falling over ourselves on the cobbles and everything was stil transcendentally lovely. (I was pretty drunk. I'm a pretty drunk.)
This morning I had a hangover which I entirely deserved. We went, therefore, to Shakespeare and Co., an English-language bookshop next to Notre Dame, which has all the things I love in a bookshop: nooks and crannies, towers of bizarrely-ordered books, passages too narrow to pass, books stacked up on the stairs, small stickers saying "Howl if you love City Lights", a dog. (Who seemed to be the only French-speaking member of staff - at any rate, she was mostly addressed as "Colette, attendez!", whereas the rest of the staff were cheerfully English and Australian and American.) We bought books. The only thing I brought back from Paris, other than biscuits, is Delta of Venus. Unrepresentative, maybe, but with something of the appropriate whimsy.
I am about to return to sleeping like the dead. As of today, or yesterday, or some other day - maybe we shouldn't have picked the only day in the year that doesn't come every year - Shim and I have been together for a year. We've done things. We've ambled tipsily around Montmartre. We've clambered over college roofs and chased cats and pondered matters serious and spent whole days reading and dozing and stood on the Royal Mile making fun of statutes of Hume. Last week we started a small kitchen fire. I don't have much I need to say about it, except, this is how life is, how it ought to be.