Paris bulletin 1 2012

When people ask me about the cost of living in Paris I usually say, ‘it depends which part of Paris you live in’. Where I live you can buy 10 kilos of onions for 1.90 euros, 10 kilos of potatoes for 1.50 euros and 24 brown eggs for 2 euros - the white ones are a little more expensive. You can wonder why we in the UK like our eggs brown on the outside while other cultures like them white, or you can ask yourself what kind of lives the hens who lay them have, or you can just buy the eggs because they’re cheap and you have lots of people to feed. One thing’s for sure, you learn a lot about the area you live in, not just by looking at the ‘exotic’ merchandise in the shops but at the staple foodstuffs and how they are packaged.

I’m thinking about this as I take a Sunday afternoon stroll in the direction of Belleville. The wet of the past two days has given way to a warmer, brighter air. The roads are dry. I see a man stop on the boulevard and walk over towards the pavement edge. What has he spotted – a coin perhaps? No, he bends down and picks up the stub of a half-smoked cigarette. He wipes it on his arm and tucks it behind his ear.

If all of Paris is a melting pot, then Belleville and the quartiers round about must be the epicentre of the pot, its churning, swirling heart. Walk along the boulevard de Belleville and you will hear just about every language there is and perhaps French least often of all.

I pass a synagogue and note the name, Michkenot Yaacov. It means nothing to me but the wonders of the web allow me to do a little research when I get back home and I learn that its community of faithful practise an ‘ultra-orthodox’ Judaism. The synagogue is right by an Algerian restaurant and opposite a shop selling produits asiatiques.  There is room for everyone in Belleville, although I do also note that the synagogue is surrounded by crush barriers so perhaps it’s not all quite as genial and accommodating as appearances would suggest.

I’ve decided my goal this afternoon is la Place Sainte Marthe which I last visited on a Nuit Blanche two years ago. Then it was a fairy-tale place of coloured lights, crowded with incomers. The cafe tables were all full. Today the cafes are shut, the square is empty except for two little girls. The dominant feeling is of poverty, shabbiness, and human fortitude. I walk on down la rue Sainte Marthe and am assailed suddenly by the sound of hymn singing. The Mission évangélique parmi les sans abris (the homeless) is open for business. A notice on the door informs me that those wishing to attend must get there early (remember the wise virgins). Once the magic number of 40 is reached the door is shut. Since you get a meal when you’ve sung your songs it’s as well not to be late. Poor people have been singing for their supper forever, but of course not all of them. ‘Les recusants’ (the refusers), are further down the street, a group of three men wrapped in their sleeping bags, sharing their wine and pitta bread. Nothing évangélique about it but still a communion of sorts.

Another kind of Paris: three days earlier I paid my first visit to the Museé d’Orsay since it reopened to the public in the autumn. The collections have been re-hung, the lighting improved and new spaces have been brought into use. It is quite simply breath-taking.

I look at the Monets, the Manets, the Degas and the Van Goghs, the Bonnards and the Vuillards, the Renoirs and Van Dongens and all the thousands of others, and I am struck again by the absence of any sensible measure of a country’s wealth or its standing in the world. Go into any great museum and feast your eyes on paintings like these, and while you do, watch what happens to your attitude to the ‘agences de notation’ (rating agencies).

It does appear however that if you build democracy on ‘bellicose, free-market capitalism’ you will always have the likelihood of over-spend on national budgets. Politicians like to be re-elected. To get re-elected they have to make promises. The promises they make are generally of the same kind no matter which ‘tendance’ they represent: more and better of everything plus ‘efficiency savings’ to help meet the costs (in the UK you do wonder how there can be anything left of the NHS, it’s been ‘made more efficient’ so often) and above all, in the rhetoric of recent years at least, ‘no tax rises’. The deceit or stupidity of it is mind-boggling.

I don’t know what conclusion to draw but I do think it’s more likely to be found in places like the Musée d’Orsay and the great libraries of the world than in the City of London or on Wall Street.

Paris, as you can perhaps tell, is as stimulating as ever and for those of you who don’t live here, don’t be deterred from visiting by the fact that one recent poll showed that 31% of respondents intend voting for the Front National at the coming elections. France is not an easy country to live in. It is as much a prisoner of its past as any of the old European countries but its capital has a vitality - best seen in places like Belleville - that make it a good place to be.