People in Paris

I'm living in Paris at the moment, and I admit that I came here with the attitude that it was just something to be done and got out of the way before I got on with the rest of my life.

"I don't want to get stuck in Paris," I told a friend before I came. 

"Then don't get stuck in Paris," she told me sagely.

"But I'm worried that I will," I said. "What if I forget that it's just supposed to be temporary?"

"Then stay," she shrugged. 

You can't argue with logic like that.

But that was before I arrived. Then I got here and settled in, and,with a terrible sense of betrayal towards my former self, I realised I was enjoying being here. Now I feel that if one has to get stuck somewhere, there are certainly worse places for it to happen.

I was told before I came here, "It's a privilege to live in Paris," and it is. It's a city full of astonishing things: a public transport system second to none (well, maybe second to some but certainly deserving of admiration), streets lined with cafes and restaurants with the pavements outside them carpeted in diminutive round tables and red-and-black chairs, people who systematically walk on the right, leaving space for people to pass on the left, not a bridge, a bench or a lamp post that isn't a spectacular work of art, people marching purposefully down the road holding baguettes, sometimes chewing the end off on their way home, the unspeakable exasperation of trying to get anything administrative done, matchbox-sized apartments, the way shops cluster (this is the street of banks, here is the street of computer repair shops, there is the street of Cambodian restaurants, down there is the street of music shops and down that road are enough random stuff shops to keep you in random stuff for the rest of your days).

   

"It's like living in a museum," observed a friend of mine. It certainly is. And it frequently seems that the exhibits in said museum are human. 

So here we go with the "People in Paris" Permanent Exhibition.

GERMAN ORATOR

The Paris metro is phenomenal. There is nowhere you cannot get to by metro, and generally get to within half an hour. So why did I take the bus one evening at rush hour when the traffic was stuck in one big immobile clump? No idea. 

After half an hour of sitting on the bus, during which time it advanced no more than five metres or so, I got off and stepped right into a seething mass of humanity. A booming voice was piercing the din, and I realised that everyone was gawking up at a very fetching fin-de-siècle balcony. I looked up to see a man in a fedora on the balcony, stationed in front of a microphone, reciting an interminable speech in German.

PICKLED PEOPLE

Yes, the Paris metro is a marvel. It even has a mobile-phone signal. But the problem is that everyone knows what a marvel it is. So everyone takes it. 

OLD MAN

Another bus story. An old bearded tramplike man got on and sat next to me. He slipped off his sandal to reveal a bandaged foot. Then he opened his bag, produced another bandage, and proceeded to wind it over his already bandaged foot.

Then he suddenly stood up, lurching around as the bus jerked and swung round corners, bellowing expressions of exasperation which gradually got quieter and quieter until he was just banging his head repeatedly against a pole, muttering, “It’s not possible, it’s not possible, it’s not possible.” 

I think he was waiting for someone to tap him on the elbow and say, “What’s not possible?” but nobody did.  

ODD COUPLE

A young couple trudged along the corridors of the metro. She was stooped over, looking almost hunchbacked, and had vampirish make-up on and a hood drawn over her head. Around her neck was a chain, the end of which was held by a guy with messy shoulder-length hair who was wearing a heavy metal T-shirt and a kilt. Then the "Keep Paris Tidy" team came past, bundled them up and carried them away to throw them into the Seine. 

PATTY THE DAYTIME HOOKER

As I was coming home one evening, I passed a group of five or six people in various stages of inebriation, all crowded onto a single bench. As I walked past, a middle-aged blonde woman who called to mind nothing so much as Patty the Daytime Hooker from My Name is Earl detached herself from the group and staggered towards me.

“Do you have some change?” she slurred at me. Before I could answer, she pushed me, staggered, and spat, “Shut up!"

Her friends laughed and called her back, and I kept walking.

I see her regularly – lounging on the church steps, hanging around on street corners, in various metro stations – always with her friends. Sometimes she is drunk; sometimes less so; sometimes she asks for money; sometimes not. But there are two remarkable things about her: first, that she clearly manages to maintain a very vibrant social life and second, that she is always well presented, made up, with her hair nicely bleached, and wearing jangly earrings and clean, trendy clothes.

CUTE LITTLE BOY

A woman and her little boy got on the metro one day, and I gave them my seat. She thanked me, and I thought that was that, until I heard some rustling and murmuring coming from his direction.

“She’s there, your friend!” I heard the woman saying.

Next thing, I felt a movement at my side, and there was the little boy. He gave me a bright smile and plunged his hand into a paper bag. He pulled out a croissant and proffered it to me.

I declined and realised afterwards that I had probably crushed him by doing so. As I got off, I turned to wave to him.

“Au revoir!” he beamed.

BLINDFOLDERS

Walking along the road one day came a group of about ten people. They were walking in pairs, with one person in each pair wearing an airline-issue blue sleep mask and their partner guiding them.  A few of the guides were giving passersby embarrassed-looking smiles as they caught their eyes.

REPRIMANDED BY A STRANGER

As I was going up an escalator, a man overtook me, giving me a stern look as he passed.

“You know somebody is going to steal your purse like that?!” he reprimanded me.

I had my purse in my back pocket, where it would have been perfectly safe if I were wearing my coat, but I had absent-mindedly taken my coat off, leaving my purse peeping out for any pickpocket to see. I thanked the man most sincerely for not stealing it and for rather pointing out to me the error of my ways.

*****

There will be more posts like this. The exhibition may be permanent, but it is also inconceivably vast, like the Louvre, and you can't do it all in one day. And, as with the Louvre, you have to beat your way through hordes of badly-behaved tourists to access the gems. 

Don't worry. I'll do it for you.