It's not quite light yet and I'm struggling to make sense of the grey shapes surrounding me. The unfamiliar contours of walls and furniture seem oppressive in the gloom, as if they are closing in on me from all sides. The alarm goes off and my husband stirs beside me, reaching slowly out from under the duvet to silence the noise, but something is wrong. I can't hear church bells. Where is the loud, insistent call to mass that marks the usual start to my day? Silence now. I don't think we're in Paris any more.
We left our rented apartment in the Marais reluctantly, heavy rucksacks and cases containing the remnants of three months worth of life in the City of Light. They were digging up the Rue Rambuteau as we left, an honour guard of diggers and cable layers to provide a parting salute as we trudged to the métro station, sand and cement caking to the wheels of our cases. Where once I had walked with a light step down the narrow staircase leading to line eleven, my gateway to discovering the city, now I slowly and painfully manoeuvred my luggage into the corridors and through the turnstiles to wait for a train that would take me away from there. Through twists and turns and changes we passed through the public transport system and out into the confused glory of the Gare du Nord, melancholy point of departure for us and thousands of others.
The previous day we had queued in the cold outside the Hôtel de Ville, trying to squeeze the last drops of cultural stimulation out of our adopted city by going to see the Sempé exhibition that had just opened. Slowly we filed past cartoons from every point in the long career of the man, examples from books and magazines interspersed with biographical information. I was taken with the idea of Sempé rushing around Paris on his scooter, sketchpad under his arm, recording the minutiae of life, before meeting his intellectual friends for coffee in a St. Germain café. A black and white shot of him at his drawing board provoked a pang of jealousy even, his complete absorption in a loved activity in the unmistakeable setting of a high-windowed Parisian apartment being something that I deeply envied. I thought that a nearby display of books, Petit Nicolas and his friends all lined up, heralded the end of the exhibition, but no. The turn of a corner revealed a vast room filled with original drawings, the distinctive ink and watercolour pieces depicting Paris and beyond, seen through the eyes of a master artist.
The views of the Luxembourg Gardens were achingly recognisable. The broad avenues of trees and the high metal gates, with the smooth pale stone of the Sénat in the background, where I had walked so many times. All of this was just across the river. We could have walked there right away, or taken the RER. It wouldn't have taken long and we could have been in our own little Sempé scene... except that we had to buy a new case and pack and clean every last detail of ourselves out of our apartment, erase ourselves from these streets and these scenes for good. We will remember the city, but will it remember us? The signature Sempé Parisian picture shows an elderly lady in the midst of giant, towering Haussmanian buildings, a tiny speck of a person taking up an insignificant amount of space on a big canvas. It's a big city indeed and people can feel overwhelmed by it, but no matter how tiny they are they are still interesting to Sempé. They are still characters worth drawing in the fascinating setting of the cityscape. They are part of Paris, as we were, once.
It turns out that Sempé travelled a fair bit, turning his keen eye onto people and places from St. Tropez to New York. He seems to have been perpetually bubbling over with ideas, forming several high profile creative partnerships and maintaining a prolific level of output through the years. There was a sense that wherever he went he saw pictures worth immortalising. He noticed the details that told unfolding stories, from the precise blue-green paint hue of a Parisian bus to the overheard snatches of conversation effervescing amidst the tables and chairs of a corner café. Thrown into the midst of the city I made similar observations, each day presenting me with something fresh and new, another aspect of the local colour to muse upon, fall in love with and write about. The long walks by the Seine and afternoons spent stirring hot chocolate and watching the world go by have come to an end, but the narratives will go on. The city will carry on living without me in it. Other people will experience it and make their own memories as they stumble on the cobbles, trying to avoid the cyclists and the mopeds. Other people will become a part of it and live the Parisian way of life in all its intensity. They will be inspired by it. It's an amazing place and I loved being there. I recall it now under the dull cloud of an English November day and as I struggle to rouse myself amidst the drizzle, I smile.
Thursday, 24 November 2011
Podcast: The Métro
My little homage to the Paris métro system, complete with sound effects recorded on Line 1 as we travelled to Concorde to stock up on Heinz beans at the WHSmith!
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Rue Mouffetard
Our first introduction to Parisian life took place on the Rue Mouffetard, nearly five years ago. We had visited Paris before, staying in a hotel and being entertained by raucous Bastille Day celebrations, doing all sorts of touristy things and loving them. Almost a decade later we decided to take a different kind of break in the city, renting a tiny apartment at the top of a tall, old building for ten days. There we started to fall in love with Paris properly and now we make the trip from the Right Bank to the Left Bank regularly to revisit our old haunts.
The Rue Mouffetard is an extremely lively street, set on a hill running down from the Place de la Contrescarpe to the Place Monge. In places it has tacky souvenir shops, créperies and bars, but there are also the many little essential outlets that remind you that locals live here too. We stayed at number 106, directly opposite a dry cleaners where we could see the clean clothes spinning round on a carousel, bagged and fresh, ready to be reunited with their owners in a swoosh and a sweep. Just a short walk from our front door was a bakery that sold the lightest, fluffiest brioche au raisin, swollen to perfection with a rich, vanilla-infused créme patisserie filling. My husband got into the very French habit of going there early every day for pastries and bread. He also started to eat vast quantities of fresh fruit. It was spring and the combination of greengrocers on the street and the twice weekly market on the Place Monge provided us with an abundance of produce.
The weather was just starting to warm up after the winter and on Sunday morning we flung open the high French windows to find the street below even more alive with activity than usual. A band was playing and soon the street was covered in confetti as a parade passed through. Children from the local nursery school emerged wearing home made hats and masks, and there was a general festive atmosphere in the bright spring light. It turned out that it was Palm Sunday and a procession had been organised, wending its way from the church of St. Etienne du Mont, just behind the Panthéon, round the 5th Arrondissement and down the hill to the church of St. Medard, just at the end of the street where we were staying. We had ended up with a front row seat at a big local celebration, the music and sunshine streaming into the apartment and making us feel part of the whole thing.
In the years that followed we began to stay elsewhere in the city, but returning to the Rue Mouffetard retained that pleasant feeling of familiarity. We happened to watch the film “Three Colours: Blue” and discovered that the street and the surrounding area play quite an important role in the plot. The central character goes there to effectively start a new life, and the cafés and alleyways that become home to her over time were recognisable to us. When we go back now we quite often stop for coffee in the bar featured in the film. The chairs there are rickety and the staff often possess a harassed, almost surly air, but perhaps we love it all the more for that. It's certainly a good place to sit for a while and watch the busy street, where there is always something going on. Good humoured loudness abounds into the early hours, when people are out buying crépes and kebabs amongst the closed up shop fronts of the grocers and the fishmongers, their voices echoing off the graffiti covered walls.
Living in the Marais is great, but the character of the place is noticeably different. People seem more polished. There are designer boutiques aplenty and you notice well-groomed individuals stepping out with looks that have definitely been “put together”. Across the river there are more students, who are content to wear worn-in clothes for years until they fall apart. I remember my first adventures out and about on the Left Bank, seeing ladies wearing battered old Converse trainers and flat, sturdy brogues with skirts and dresses, their hair waving free of the tyranny of straighteners. I felt instantly at home, which is probably what continues to draw myself and my husband back there. In what we think used to be an old bookshop, innocent at the front but getting progressively more “adult” as you ventured further into it, there is now a lovely Salon de Thé. Where once an old man sat behind a grubby counter in the half-light, there are now racks of tea caddies, all neatly arranged against freshly painted, pistachio green hues. You can sit and sip tea on light coloured, overstuffed sofas, admiring the limed-oak floor and looking out at people passing by the window. They walk down the street that we know so well, that unforgettable place where we first lodged properly in the city, the place where the chain reaction that brought us back here first started. Satisfied, we cross the bridge and go back again to the place that we now call home, seeing all the names on the doorbells as we pass and wondering who they belong to, what brought them here and which special places they know in Paris that bring the comfort of the familiar to them.
The Rue Mouffetard is an extremely lively street, set on a hill running down from the Place de la Contrescarpe to the Place Monge. In places it has tacky souvenir shops, créperies and bars, but there are also the many little essential outlets that remind you that locals live here too. We stayed at number 106, directly opposite a dry cleaners where we could see the clean clothes spinning round on a carousel, bagged and fresh, ready to be reunited with their owners in a swoosh and a sweep. Just a short walk from our front door was a bakery that sold the lightest, fluffiest brioche au raisin, swollen to perfection with a rich, vanilla-infused créme patisserie filling. My husband got into the very French habit of going there early every day for pastries and bread. He also started to eat vast quantities of fresh fruit. It was spring and the combination of greengrocers on the street and the twice weekly market on the Place Monge provided us with an abundance of produce.
The weather was just starting to warm up after the winter and on Sunday morning we flung open the high French windows to find the street below even more alive with activity than usual. A band was playing and soon the street was covered in confetti as a parade passed through. Children from the local nursery school emerged wearing home made hats and masks, and there was a general festive atmosphere in the bright spring light. It turned out that it was Palm Sunday and a procession had been organised, wending its way from the church of St. Etienne du Mont, just behind the Panthéon, round the 5th Arrondissement and down the hill to the church of St. Medard, just at the end of the street where we were staying. We had ended up with a front row seat at a big local celebration, the music and sunshine streaming into the apartment and making us feel part of the whole thing.
In the years that followed we began to stay elsewhere in the city, but returning to the Rue Mouffetard retained that pleasant feeling of familiarity. We happened to watch the film “Three Colours: Blue” and discovered that the street and the surrounding area play quite an important role in the plot. The central character goes there to effectively start a new life, and the cafés and alleyways that become home to her over time were recognisable to us. When we go back now we quite often stop for coffee in the bar featured in the film. The chairs there are rickety and the staff often possess a harassed, almost surly air, but perhaps we love it all the more for that. It's certainly a good place to sit for a while and watch the busy street, where there is always something going on. Good humoured loudness abounds into the early hours, when people are out buying crépes and kebabs amongst the closed up shop fronts of the grocers and the fishmongers, their voices echoing off the graffiti covered walls.
Living in the Marais is great, but the character of the place is noticeably different. People seem more polished. There are designer boutiques aplenty and you notice well-groomed individuals stepping out with looks that have definitely been “put together”. Across the river there are more students, who are content to wear worn-in clothes for years until they fall apart. I remember my first adventures out and about on the Left Bank, seeing ladies wearing battered old Converse trainers and flat, sturdy brogues with skirts and dresses, their hair waving free of the tyranny of straighteners. I felt instantly at home, which is probably what continues to draw myself and my husband back there. In what we think used to be an old bookshop, innocent at the front but getting progressively more “adult” as you ventured further into it, there is now a lovely Salon de Thé. Where once an old man sat behind a grubby counter in the half-light, there are now racks of tea caddies, all neatly arranged against freshly painted, pistachio green hues. You can sit and sip tea on light coloured, overstuffed sofas, admiring the limed-oak floor and looking out at people passing by the window. They walk down the street that we know so well, that unforgettable place where we first lodged properly in the city, the place where the chain reaction that brought us back here first started. Satisfied, we cross the bridge and go back again to the place that we now call home, seeing all the names on the doorbells as we pass and wondering who they belong to, what brought them here and which special places they know in Paris that bring the comfort of the familiar to them.
Square du Temple
The Square du Temple is not one of the city's grand, expansive parks. It is a green space squeezed into the Marais in the shadow of the old covered market, the Carreau du Temple. The market, a former haunt of second-hand clothes merchants, is in the process of being turned into a “space for all”, including a Judo hall. Whether the area actually needs such a facility remains to be seen, but for now the curling, exposed iron ribs of the partly demolished structure provide a useful landmark for orientation. If I see them, I know I'm on the right track for the park.
The first time I passed through the little green swing gate, my husband turned to me and said: “You'll like this place, it has ducks.” Ducks there were indeed, with their own charming pond, island and duckhouse, prime real estate in the heart of the 3rd Arrondissement, pleasantly shaded with trees and bushes. There were also people. The overburdened confines of the buildings surrounding the square had overflowed out into park, and the benches were crowded. The well-provisioned play area was filled with excited children and harassed parents. It was a warm summer evening and the few remaining Parisians left working in the city in August seemed to have all paused there too, on their way home, ties loosened, sandals kicked off, sweating gently, leaning on the bandstand or reposing peacefully on the lush grass.
At lunchtimes the park can be packed with teenagers from the local schools, jostling for position on the bandstand as they eat their burgers and frites. Prim office girls and shop assistants juggle sandwiches and mobile phones, their hair starting to tumble out of that morning's hastily formed topknot or ponytail. Elderly Chinese couples walk the paths slowly, continuing their daily constitutional from the Place de la Republique and pausing occasionally to rest in the warmth of the sun, watching the pigeons strut from bench to bin in search of food, and lost somewhere in the midst of a thousand memories with faraway looks in their tired, clouded eyes.
One afternoon I sat there in the blazing heat on the only free bench I could find, one that was in direct sunlight. In front of me were sunbathers, bronzed and content to sleep the rest of the day away as they slowly cooked in the city's summer oven, while I barely glanced up from my Kindle. Just me and the collected short stories of Guy de Maupassant, absorbed for half an hour or so in my local park. As I read stories set in a Paris long past, today's Paris was happening all around me. Toddlers made their unsteady way towards the slides and the climbing frames while cyclists wheeled their bikes across the square, cutting off awkward corners and traffic clogged junctions with a peaceful saunter through the calm greenness. Getting up to start the short walk back to the apartment, I exited the park via the farthest away gate, near to the offices of the Mayor of the 3rd Arrondissement. At the bottom of the steps there stood a young couple, just married and smiling. The bride looked relaxed in a simple white dress and with tiny white flowers entwined in her loose, curly hair. Along with her new husband she was surrounded by a small group of well wishers, dressed in their best, laughing and taking photographs. The sun shone brilliantly down on all of them from a huge, cloudless sky. It was a beautiful day to be married in Paris. The park gate clanged shut behind me and I headed back through the Marais streets, smiling as I took each sandalled step. Now boots are the most appropriate footwear and the park benches are often soaked with rain. When venturing to the park on drier days I have to wear a scarf and the ducks on the pond are now fluffed up against the approaching winter, but hopefully that young couple are still enjoying matrimonial bliss as I am still enjoying the Square du Temple, that tiny square of nature so close to the tiny square of Paris that is my home.
The first time I passed through the little green swing gate, my husband turned to me and said: “You'll like this place, it has ducks.” Ducks there were indeed, with their own charming pond, island and duckhouse, prime real estate in the heart of the 3rd Arrondissement, pleasantly shaded with trees and bushes. There were also people. The overburdened confines of the buildings surrounding the square had overflowed out into park, and the benches were crowded. The well-provisioned play area was filled with excited children and harassed parents. It was a warm summer evening and the few remaining Parisians left working in the city in August seemed to have all paused there too, on their way home, ties loosened, sandals kicked off, sweating gently, leaning on the bandstand or reposing peacefully on the lush grass.
At lunchtimes the park can be packed with teenagers from the local schools, jostling for position on the bandstand as they eat their burgers and frites. Prim office girls and shop assistants juggle sandwiches and mobile phones, their hair starting to tumble out of that morning's hastily formed topknot or ponytail. Elderly Chinese couples walk the paths slowly, continuing their daily constitutional from the Place de la Republique and pausing occasionally to rest in the warmth of the sun, watching the pigeons strut from bench to bin in search of food, and lost somewhere in the midst of a thousand memories with faraway looks in their tired, clouded eyes.
One afternoon I sat there in the blazing heat on the only free bench I could find, one that was in direct sunlight. In front of me were sunbathers, bronzed and content to sleep the rest of the day away as they slowly cooked in the city's summer oven, while I barely glanced up from my Kindle. Just me and the collected short stories of Guy de Maupassant, absorbed for half an hour or so in my local park. As I read stories set in a Paris long past, today's Paris was happening all around me. Toddlers made their unsteady way towards the slides and the climbing frames while cyclists wheeled their bikes across the square, cutting off awkward corners and traffic clogged junctions with a peaceful saunter through the calm greenness. Getting up to start the short walk back to the apartment, I exited the park via the farthest away gate, near to the offices of the Mayor of the 3rd Arrondissement. At the bottom of the steps there stood a young couple, just married and smiling. The bride looked relaxed in a simple white dress and with tiny white flowers entwined in her loose, curly hair. Along with her new husband she was surrounded by a small group of well wishers, dressed in their best, laughing and taking photographs. The sun shone brilliantly down on all of them from a huge, cloudless sky. It was a beautiful day to be married in Paris. The park gate clanged shut behind me and I headed back through the Marais streets, smiling as I took each sandalled step. Now boots are the most appropriate footwear and the park benches are often soaked with rain. When venturing to the park on drier days I have to wear a scarf and the ducks on the pond are now fluffed up against the approaching winter, but hopefully that young couple are still enjoying matrimonial bliss as I am still enjoying the Square du Temple, that tiny square of nature so close to the tiny square of Paris that is my home.
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