Loitering at the fuzzy edges of reality

Hang around there long enough and there's no telling what you might find.

Reasons not to scratch at the stove top

As I waited for a pot of water to boil one day, the red glow of the hotplate showed up some impurities burnt onto the surface of the stove. So I picked up a silver teaspoon and started idly scratching at the black bits with it.

And next thing – and this is no word of a lie – the teaspoon melted. A chunk of it liquefied and dropped onto the stove top. I had no idea that teaspoons did that.

As I scrabbled around for paper towel to wipe the molten metal off the stove top, I knocked over a glass jar, and next thing there was broken glass all over the floor.

I wiped up the molten silver, then  picked up the biggest pieces of glass and went to get the vacuum cleaner to deal with the smaller pieces. But the vacuum cleaner had inexplicably stopped working. So I had to sweep up the shards as best I could with a broom.

On the bright side, though, the water boiled beautifully. 

EPILOGUE: A splinter of glass escaped the broom and somehow migrated down the passage. I stepped on it several days later while walking around barefoot.

Please read

At the university where I work, notices are sometimes put up outside the office for the attention of the students. One appeared recently with a severe instruction written at the top: MUST BE READ BY ALL STUDENTS! in bright red. This is what the students were being instructed to read:

Five pages of rules and regulations for the exams. Which I’m sure were very important, but that’s not really the point, is it?

There is nothing for you out there

As anyone who has ever spent any amount of time here knows, Paris is the centre of the world. Correction: Paris is the world. There is nothing outside. Nothing! The map-making authorities confirm this.

The topmost horizontal road is the périphérique – the ring road around the city. As you can see, nothing exists beyond the bounds of the city. 

(Except perhaps Saint Ouen, but that's really more of a hypothetical concept than an actual place.)

Displaced duck

I have walked past this fountain a hundred times and there has never before been so much as a suggestion of a duck in it. It is in the city centre, surrounded by concrete and paving stones, and there is nothing for a duck to eat around here.

Who put a duck in the fountain???

Hidden garden

Another university that I teach at (the one I mentioned in the previous post - the one that scheduled its holidays without consulting me) is in a bit of a bleak location and doesn’t have much in the way of cheery lunch spots. When I can’t avoid having lunch there, I generally go and sit on a bench opposite the station. This is the bench:

It’s a two-way bench. If you get tired of looking at trams, you can turn round and sit the other way, in which case the view is this:

which is not much of an improvement, granted, but still, it allows for variety, which is something.

I was sitting on the bench eating my sandwich and reading when I heard a voice saying, “Excuse me, can I disturb you for a moment?”

I looked up and saw a pretty blonde young woman approaching. She sat down on the bench and leaned towards me in a confidential manner.

“There is a very pretty park in that building,” she said, pointing to the gate next to the bank. “There, there!” she said urgently, pointing at two women going in at the gate. “Go in with the ladies!”

But the gate had already closed behind them.

“The code is –” she murmured, and told me the code. “Then you can avoid eating in the street.”

She gave me a dazzling smile, stood up, and was gone. Repeating the code to myself so that I wouldn’t forget it, I went and typed it on the keypad next to the gate. The gate swung open and I found myself in the parking area outside a block of flats. There was a pretty little lawn in front of the building, but was that what she was talking about?

No, it wasn't. I went round the back of the building and was faced with this:

I went up the path and sat on a bench. Nobody was around. It was a beautiful spring day, flowers of all colours decorated the grass, the birds were singing a veritable symphony in the trees, and my sandwich and I sat there for twenty minutes with just the birds and the trees for company.

Spring morning clichés

I had to go out early one morning, and it was such a beautiful day that I couldn’t bear the thought of burrowing underground to go by metro. I was near the Promenade Plantée, an incredibly pretty path that runs from the Bastille to the Bois de Vincennes, and it seemed a pity to waste the opportunity, so I took the scenic route.

It was the mellowest of mornings; the morning for which springtime clichés were made. The sun bathed the buildings in a gentle golden glow; the pink blossoms on the trees announced spring.

There was not a cloud in the clear blue sky.

The sun was shining; the birds were singing; walkers were walking, runners were running:

skippers were skipping:

and tigers were resting. 

And the universe smiled upon me.

Some things never get old

And this is one of them: my Wednesday backdrop.

And another: my Wednesday evening walk home.

         

Gleeden

A business has to be fairly successful if it has the funds to carpet-bomb an unsuspecting public with adverts. This one apparently is:

A dating site aimed specifically at married women.

It gleefully plasters its ads all over the metro:

"On principle, we do not offer loyalty cards"

"Being faithful to two men is being twice as faithful"

 It rams them down your throat as you stand at the bus stop:

"Unlike anti-depressants, a lover costs nothing to public healthcare"

It commandeers billboards and buses, distracting you as you drive, :

"Holidays are a chance to go and look elsewhere"

"How about cheating on your lover with your husband this year?"

    

The astonishing thing, of course, is not that such a site exists (if it didn't, it would be invented quickly enough), but that the adverts made it past the censor and into the public arena.

In fairness to the viewing public, this ad campaign has not gone down well. There has been an avalanche of news articles and blog posts condemning the site, the concept and the clients, and the posters are regularly torn down or otherwise vandalised. (At my local metro station, one of these adverts has been ripped to shreds at least five times – but it's always back up again a couple of days later.) 

So, what have we learnt?

1) Don't scratch at the stove top (although you shouldn't really need me to tell you that).

2) Watch out for those wandering splinters of glass.

3) Sometimes you are presented with five pages of rules and regulations and you just have to read them.

4) The world outside Paris does not exist.

5) Wildlife turns up in the most incongruous places.

6) Dull-looking doors can conceal treasures. 

7) Some things never get old. 

8) There's a website out there for everyone.