Chunnel vision

It’s time to face it. Time to admit that our days in Paris are numbered. In a little over three weeks, the lease ends on our apartment and we have to move on.

We’ve set our sights on London.

Like so many Frenchies, we’ve decided to give our careers a shot in the arm by going where the work is. LSP has suffered for so long, swimming against the tide in the French job market, where experience, it seems, counts for nothing unless you’ve been to the right school, and handwriting analysis is seen as a legitimate recruitment tool. I, too, will have more options to broaden my field of work, being able to work in the UK thanks to a British-born grandmother.

So we’re shaking ourselves out of what has become, if we’re honest, semi-retirement and plunging back into the fast lane. The main thing, we tell ourselves, is that we’re staying in Europe, close to our ever-expanding clan of friends and family here, and still providing an attractive option for our Australian circle to visit!

The master plan is still Paris; but Paris on our terms, in security and certainty. One day, with replenished resources and renewed desire, we will return to carve our slice of this wonderful place.

In the meantime, we are keeping the farewell melancholy at bay by packing and looking for somewhere to live. Nothing like a rising wave of panic to stem the tide of sentiment.

Lord. Even my metaphors are muddled.

Shhh!

The most annoying man in the world was at my gym this morning.

I was in the middle of my wake-up workout, whittling away the grogginess, when my slowly sharpening focus was shattered. The swing doors smacked open and in he strutted: Mr. Cocky McTosspot. You know the type. His invasive swagger advertised his inadequacies so loudly that he might as well have been holding a sign saying “I DRIVE A RED SPORTS CAR.” He was one of those sad little men who compensate by making as much unnecessary noise as possible.

Ratcheting up the seat on the machines with an arrogant flick. Adjusting the weights with showy clanks. Huffing and straining, veins popping ostentatiously. Dramatic grunts and hiss-counting reps: “Dix-huitttttttt, dix-neufffffff, VINGT!” and then dropping the weight with an echoing crash as if to crow “Hear that? Hear how much iron I can lift?”

Mister, if eye-rolling made a noise, I’d be DEAFENING you right now.

Then, appalling cherry on the cake of his awfulness, he answers his mobile and shouts belligerently at some poor assistant. Repeatedly.

My mind seethes with revenge-thoughts of frightening violence. I stand up and tap him on the shoulder as he admires himself sickeningly in the mirror. I reach down, take his phone, place it on the floor, and smash it to pieces with a 25 kilo dumbbell.

OK, that last bit didn’t actually happen. But I did give him a really withering look on my way out. Take THAT, McTosspot!

Lemon Drops

Back in Paris after a glorious time on and around the Amalfi coast. Impressions and highlights:

The transformation of Capri in the evening, when the daytripping hordes have emptied onto the ferries, and the island exhales into dusk.

Sunset Bellinis made from fresh white peaches on an impossible terrace hanging – so high! -above the soft darkening sea, pink cliffs fading in the twilight chill.

Trying not to hum "Funiculì, Funiculà" on the ride down to the Marina Grande.

Arriving at our villa in Amalfi, running from room to room trying to work out which one Ingrid Bergman used to sleep in.

Breakfasts on the blue-tiled terrace, squinting into the diamond-dazzled sea.

Exploring the terraced gardens dropping down to the water, picking armfuls of fruit and flowers.

Days spent at the tiny beach club, lizard-like on the rocks, and long shady lunches of seafood and wine.

The crystalline sea, so cold it made you laugh, enticing with mysterious grottos and white pebble coves.

The colourful chaos of a religious festival greeting St. Andrew’s relics, arriving by boat from a two-day visit Rome, to be re-interred in the Duomo, 800 years to the day since they first arrived from Constantinople. Priests and policemen, sailors and schoolchildren, everyone bedecked in robes, band-striped uniforms (swoon!) and medieval finery, church bells topping the joyful din.

Fireworks after dinner, deafeningly close, lighting up the buildings clinging to the hillsides like a Neapolitan nativity scene.

Afternoon gelato and after-dinner digestifs.

White-knuckled bus trips along clinging cliff-top roads, winding and lurching from near-miss to near-death, trying still to take in the beauty flashing by.

The first thrilling moment in the streets of Pompeii when you share the sensations of its original inhabitants, shockingly immediate.

The smell of wood smoke and wisteria in the gardens of Ravello, perched prow-like over the coast.

Being told I spoke Italian with a Portuguese accent.

Above all, and everywhere, the scent of citrus blossom; the lush yellow and sharp syrup of lemon.

Alien

I should have been prepared for the sweet-sad hit of homesickness when I crushed the eucalyptus leaf and breathed in the dry, blue sky scent. It had been a reflex action on seeing the gum tree so unexpectedly in the middle of the Parc André Citroën, a modern and rather strict stretch of green between the Seine and the 15^th arrondissement. In seeking shelter from another bustling spring shower, I’d found myself in a towering glasshouse featuring the flora of Australia and New Zealand. I wandered around the unlikely patch of sandy scrub, revelling in the familiarity of the plants and quietly amused at how incongruous they looked, these straggly spiky things, encased in their glittering palace and categorised with bombastic botanical signage. I walked and greeted them one by one, pricking my skin on their sharp little leaves and smelling their small honeyed flowers. I ran my finger between the red fibre ridges of the bottlebrush, licking the nectar drips and tasting my childhood.

Sweet, yes, but sad too, to see these friends transplanted so far from home. The anaemic silky oak stretching towards the glass roof made me think of the shivering clumps of wallabies I’d seen in the dismal menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes. Or the poor mute kookaburra pining in the Hong Kong zoo. At least I’d chosen to uproot myself and come to the other side of the world, unlike these dejected specimens, enforced foreigners, bravely drawing my pity away from myself.

The rain passed and I held the gum leaf to my nose, inhaled home deeply, and stepped out blinking into the gorgeous, garish green.

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.