Buds

We had a little taste of Spring on Saturday, with late-teen temperatures giving everything a sheen of burgeoning brightness. I love seeing the tips of the chestnut branches swell and shine, so ready to burst overnight in a fresh riot of feathery green.

This was my view as I sat out on our balcony for the first time this year, luxuriating in the anticipation of leafy peacefulness.

There is something so quintessentially French about the way they prune their trees. It makes the springtime transformation even more miraculous: black brutal stumps throwing out such verdant, misty filigree.

Only a few weeks to go until they remove the signs in the parks telling you that the lawns are having their Winter rest, and picnic season will finally be able to spread out its gingham blanket invitingly.

Not quite yet, though. La Chaîne Météo has just told me to expect storms with the possibility of light snow next week. Rough winds indeed.

Liberté, Egalité, Fidélité

At what point can you say – with the conviction of a local – that you truly live in Paris?

We have been here for two years now (can you believe it?) and there have been many important Parisification progress-markers: renting an apartment, opening a bank account, making friends, obtaining a Carte de Séjour, finding a job, falling off a Vélib and attending the Bastille Day fireman’s ball.

While these are all impressive and hard-won achievements, I’ve found it is the everyday accomplishments which really count when it comes to feeling like you belong; the exhilarating mini-milestones which mark your integration. We were walking in the Parc Montsouris on Sunday (it’s our local, don’t you know) when we happened to bump into a French friend. Well, friend-of-a-friend is probably more accurate, but the point is he was French, and we knew him. We had a chat, promised to catch up for a drink and moved on, secretly thrilled by our first Totally Random Acquaintance Encounter. Absurd how much it made us feel like we’d arrived, this knowledge that, just like any other Parisian, we could run into people we knew at any time.

You come to cherish and celebrate these little landmark moments: the first time you stare haughtily back at a passer-by, until they look away. The day when the boulanger selects the choicest, softest baguette and hands it to you with a smile. That occasion when someone asks you for directions, and you can confidently give them. Or that sweet golden instant when the supermarket cashier asks if you have a carte de fidélité and you proclaim “Oui!”, producing it with a nonchalant flourish.

It’s taken me two years but I finally have “frequent shopper” loyalty cards for my two local supermarkets. They’re completely useless, of course, in terms of earning discounts or extra value. I couldn’t even tell you what the complicated accruals mean at the bottom of my docket. Their worth lies entirely in the “resi-dentity” they bestow; they make me feel like a true riverain, a card-carrying member of the neighbourhood. I finally belong in the local shop. For local people. And perhaps in another two years I’ll learn how to redeem my millions of points and exchange them for a novelty key-ring.

Now all I need is a plaid nylon shopping cart and I’ll fit right in.

Frightfully

I finally watched Atonement last night. As far as I can make out, it’s a film about people talking veh veh fast, whilst walking tehly tehly quickly. I found it all quite exhausting. (I can’t imagine how the actors felt.)

What is it about Keira Knightley: the jaw? The mouth? Dreadful.

Excess

I was delighted to note, on one of my neighbourhood wanderings (incurable flâneur that I am) that a local street is named after M. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin.

It tickled me that he is described as “magistrat et gastronome”: only in France, I suspect, would the two be considered of equal importance.

“Oh yes, he was a brilliant lawyer and politician. But his real claim to fame, bien entendu, is that he really loved his food.”

I first came across the name of this renowned epicure in the beautiful burgundian village of Époisses. We were tasting the local cheese, a rich-runny marvel of pungent creaminess, its dusk orange rind washed lovingly with marc de Bourgogne. Our host proudly told us that Brillat-Savarin himself had proclaimed Époisses the King of cheeses. (Not the Baby Cheeses, then?)

Having done some research, I now realise what a high honour it was to have been thus described by such a fromagophilic giant of gastronomy. This is the man who wrote: "Dinner without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye." He obviously took food very seriously indeed; another famous quote of his asserts that "The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity, than the discovery of a new star."

Riiight.

Perhaps the street sign should read: “magistrat, gastronome et hyperboliste”.

Renovating?

I must give you the name of our local painting & decorating supplies shop.

X-rated

It’s not every literary exhibition that comes with a parental warning. It’s a bit of a shock, then, to see that under-16s are forbidden from entering the French National Library’s latest: L’Enfer de la Bibliothèque Nationale. And at the risk of sounding prude, it’s a good thing, too!

The exhibition displays some of the racier contents of the library’s “sealed section”: the hell-vault used to protect the reading public from sexually explicit and morally corrupting writing, images and photography. It showcases everything from manuscripts of the Marquis de Sade to Japanese erotic woodblock prints via naughty postcards and early porno films.

Now I’m not suggesting that under-16s should be necessarily excluded because of the saucy nature of the exhibits (and, let’s be clear, some are very saucy indeed). The unfortunate fact is they’ll probably have seen worse on the web, Net Nanny notwithstanding. It’s more because of the sheer blushing, squirming embarrassment of looking at anything of a sexual nature with one’s elders that I think youngsters should stay away.

Even I, at more than double the minimum age, felt exquisitely uncomfortable as I sidled around the display cases, trying not to spend too long in front of any one image, lest the old lady on my left thought I was some drooling deviant. I made such a show of reading the captions and accompanying explanatory notes that I barely even registered the rude pictures themselves, so swift was my nonchalant, “I’m an intellectual not a pervert” scan. Funnily enough, the old lady had no such compunction in inspecting the exhibits in great and appreciative detail. In fact it was quite difficult to get close enough for even a cursory glance at some displays, so thick was the cluster of forthright grey-haired admirers.

It doesn’t matter which side of sixteen you fall on, there is just something deeply disturbing about looking at explicit images of fornication next to someone who could be your grandmother.

Apart from that, the exhibition is most enjoyable. Oh, but not in a dirty, hands-in-pockets sort of way, you understand. Gosh. I mean it’s very instructive and historically edifying. Yes. Edifying.

Look out for the medieval illuminated manuscript with a tiny, colourful drawing in the margin depicting a nun plucking phallic fruit from what can only be described as a penis tree. You’ll find it through the flagellation room and past the bordello guidebooks on the left. You may need to elbow a few grannies out of the way, though.

Image: Création c -album, photographie Alain Goustard/BNF, architecte Dominique Perrault © Adagp, Paris 2007

Snap

Why do we take photos? The one above, for example. I took this just over a week ago, as I arrived in the South Pacific rapture of l’Ile des Pins in New Caledonia. Was it not enough for me to stand awestruck and drink in the stupendous turquoise beauty of the scene? Why did I have to imprison it in pixels before running across the talcum-fine sand and sighing into aquamarine bliss?

I think the first reason lies in the “pinch me” reflex: a need to capture visual evidence of having really experienced such a too-good-to-be-true place. Could this really be happening? Better take a photo to make sure, to produce as Exhibit A when I wake up from my holiday-dream. Hey presto: paradise proved.

The second reason is, of course, so that you can show others. Not from some sadistic “look where I’ve been nyer-nyerdy-nyer-nyer” impulse. (Well, not always. Although I must say it did give me a thrill to feel everyone crane their necks in our wintry Parisian café as I showed LSP my vacation photos on the laptop. Even the impassive waiter hovered excessively, taking much longer than usual with the cruet and bread.) Our essential human urge, when faced with the good fortune of finding such perfection, is to share it. As freely and broadly as possible.

I was lucky enough to be able to discover this breathtaking place with my Mum and my sister, which made it even more priceless through our shared, gleeful disbelief. (Indelible, heart-swelling memories of happiness which burst to the surface the instant I look at our pictures.) But for all those dear to me who weren’t there, I have this image for you. Isn’t it wonderful? I hope it makes you feel the same warmth I feel when I look at it.

And one day, may we stand together, grinning, in front of an equal splendour, and take a photo of it.

P.S. Thank you for your continued interest in this blog, and sorry for taking such a long break. I was so touched when in Australia to have so many of you ask when my next entry was going to be. Now that I’m back in my Parisian garret after such a lovely time in Summer, I hope you’ll keep checking in and not be too disappointed.