Heartburn

This is my pet hate. Next time you watch Star Academy, look out for it in the shots of the audience. I guarantee you’ll see it: some pathetic tween making a stupid heart with her fingers. There’s always one, and you can bet the camera will somehow manage to get a shot through the finger-heart, framing the performer; a touching and powerful image of the love shared at this deeply moving occasion. Excuse me while I throw up a little in my mouth.

Is it just a French thing, or has this heart disease spread globally? Do you see it at Anthony Callea concerts? I tend to think not, having watched the most recent series of Australian Idol, which remained mercifully heart-free.

Yes, I think it must be a Franco-saccharine phenomenon, which has even spread from TV variety shows and teeny-bopper pop concerts to the sports arena. I’m referring to the French swimming champion Laure Manaudou, who became a pin-up for the power of l’amour when she left the French swimming team to follow the love of her life to Italy. The sickening image of Laure finishing a race, ripping off her goggles and finger-hearting to her lover boy made me retch for weeks.

I can’t explain this reaction I have; it’s not like I don’t enjoy seeing, feeling and celebrating that loftiest and most beautiful of human emotions. I don’t go around shouting at couples to stop holding hands. (Although don’t get me started on public snoggers. I mean just get a room.) This aversion reminds me of a friend who simply cannot bear that hand sign people make, thumb and pinkie extended, to represent the telephone. Makes her physically ill. That’s what the hand-heart does to me. The mere sight of it, childish and cloying, makes me nauseous.

I suppose you could say I’m heartily sick of it.

The votes are in...

and the winner is... Kylie! Our very own pint-sized pop princess is France's favourite Star Academy mentor, beating the equine Québécoise with a 16% margin. What with one thing and another, I'm quite a proud Aussie at the moment.

Fantasy

Last weekend I lived out a long-held dream and sang Patricia Kaas in public. With a microphone.

I fell in love with Patty back in the Winter of 1989 when, as a student in Paris, I spent long hours in front of the TV watching the afternoon teen music shows (to perfect my aural comprehension, obviously). Kaas had just released “Mademoiselle Chante” and was on high rotation. I rushed out to FNAC and bought the cassette which I played obsessively on my walkman. (That sentence makes me feel so old.)

Every morning my head would fill with her husky, jazzy, sophisti-pop voice, all the way from the Porte de Clignancourt to St. Michel. I would step lightly up the boulevard as dawn broke, humming with pleasure at the exhilarating arpeggios: “Elle voulait jouer Cabaret…” Turning into the place de la Sorbonne: “En buvant dans les verres, Un fond de picon bière…”. Taking my seat in the Amphithéâtre Richelieu: “Je peux vous dire qu'elle en rêvait, D'un jazz band sous un clair de lune…” And all the while feeling swooningly Continental.

No doubt any French readers are pointing and laughing at me now: I’ve probably just outed myself as the biggest dag on the planet. (While I’m at it, I might as well tell you that my other favourite chanteuse was Mylène Farmer. I know.)

Which is why it took so many beers to get me up on stage in that fabulously low “gayraoke” bar last Saturday night to fulfill my teenage fantasy:

“Mon mec à moi il me parle d’aventures, et quand elles brillent dans ses yeux, j’pourrais y passer la nuit. Il parle d’amour comme il parle des voitures, et moi j’l suis où il veut, tellement je crois tout c’qu’il m’dit.”

For those present, thank you for your generous and indulgent support.

Wrinkly

This is what I’m going to look like after the weekend. I’m going to fill the bath with blistering water, lower myself slowly, monkey-like (oo oo ee ee aa aa), and luxuriate endlessly, pinkly, warmly. My toes will be nimbly prehensile, turning the tap for countless hot top-ups, my body reveling in steamy bliss as I marvel at the luxury of having it again: hot water. On tap.

It’s been seven days. A week of icy showers; boiling the kettle to wash up; freezing showers; messages left with the plumber; glacial showers; waiting in the apartment; calling the landlord… and really, really cold showers.

It’s not normal to have blue hands for a whole week.

And that’s why I am going to have the longest bath in history, and emerge looking like a Giant French Prune.

Delicious.

Filthy habit

I’m going to get all strait-laced, thin-lipped and tut-tutty for a moment. I’m sorry but I am. It’s just this: why oh why do people have to spit in public?

Every early-morning jog is invariably marred by having to dodge countless blobs of froth-slimy hideousness. Why do people feel the overwhelming need to get rid of their saliva when running? Granted, it can tend to get a bit thick and gloopy (sorry), but surely this is reason to conserve it rather than dehydrate the mouth further? I certainly don’t eject it and I’ve never choked on my own spit. I just don’t think it’s necessary. Perhaps those who exercise outdoors feel they have some special dispensation to perform anti-social and disgusting acts because, well, they’re rugged and active and that’s what sportspeople do?

Now if this were legitimate (and I’m not conceding for an instant that it is, let's be quite clear), it makes it even more inexcusable for non-exercisers to hawk and spatter all over the street. Yet I see it everywhere and at every time – people discharging mid-conversation, spritzing and hissing with odious abandon. Vile sputters of mucous-drool leaving glistening gobs of festering filth behind them…

Am I overreacting?

In trying to think why this makes me shudder so, I dredge up a particularly sick-making childhood memory of walking behind a man in Hong Kong (where spitting was even more distressingly common than it seems to be here). Either it was a particularly breezy day, or the pedestrian traffic was moving at a faster-than-usual clip, because it seemed only a split second after hearing the sickening hack that the resulting phlegm smacked wetly on my neatly pressed shirt. Scarred for life.

The other reason I really dislike the habit is because I think it is often done with intent. Let’s go back to jogging for an explanation. I have noticed that the more attractive you find the person running past, the more likely he is to spit in passing. It’s as if, sensing some incoming ogling (not that I ogle, but you get my point), a sputum-defense mechanism swings into action to make the object of appreciation less appealing. A sort of gaydar jamming technique, so the gentle thrill of any innocent eyeballing is completely ruined. Fiendishly and depressingly effective. Because really, who could ever look with appreciation at a common expectorator?

All spit, no polish.

Flappers

Yesterday I charlestoned my way through a day in the life of a thoroughly modern woman of the 1920s at the Musée Galliera exhibition Les années folles: (1919 – 1929). A delirious collection of couture dresses and accessories captured the innocent decadence of this breathless decade, from sporty “anyone-for-tennis” ensembles to glitter-dripping cocktail frocks. Poiret, Lanvin, Worth, Patou – the names almost as dazzling as the outfits themselves. My favourites were the utterly chic little black dress from Chanel and the intriguingly named “Lesbos” dress by Lanvin – an exquisite absinthe-green and silver creation shown at the 1925 Paris exposition in the “Pavillon de l’élégance” (see the sketch above).
The crowds and the claustrophobic layout made it a bit of a challenge to move between the displays, but it did mean I got to hear some wonderful snatches of conversation. Like the elderly lady in raptures before the woollen bathing suits studded with brocade and sequins, only to turn away, shaking her head and saying to no-one in particular, “of course they itched dreadfully”.
Too too thrilling!

Toussaint

It was almost festive in the Montparnasse Cemetery yesterday, tombs bright with chrysanthemum and cyclamen, the aisles between the headstones crowded with visitors; gossiping, strolling, commemorating the faithful departed. This is the custom, it seems, on these days of All Saints and All Souls.
Granite glinted dully in the struggling November sun as the living bent to the task of sweeping, scrubbing, weeding and remembering. Some grim, some cheerful, some weary and resigned. Duty? Grief? Habit?
It is a tradition which I find foreign and old-fashioned, and yet I can appreciate that there is comfort to be found in ritual. Even if it seems strange to me to nominate one particular day each year for remembering those we have lost.
Great for the florists, though.