Paris bulletin 4 2014

It’s not what you expect in Paris in the first week of June: rain like an Indian monsoon, pedestrians scuttling along under open umbrellas as if they had stepped straight out of a Hiroshige painting. That’s what we had the first full day I was back. Temps pourri, et froid en plus. But that was Tuesday and today, Friday 6 June, the 70^th anniversary of the D-Day Landings in Normandy, the sky is a perfect blue and it is HOT. Perhaps we are finally going to have some proper summer weather.

On Day One of being back I had to go down to the Forum des Halles, the biggest shopping mall of central Paris. It’s never an enjoyable outing. I wander round and round this horrible subterranean maze like a lost soul, - comme une âme en peine might describe it more accurately . I seem to lose all sense of direction once I’m inside and I wonder sometimes if it’s me, or if others are similarly bamboozled by the signage. It’s particularly disorienting at present because of the immense travaux going on in the superstructure and the complete redoing of the garden areas. Paris is always a bit of a building site, in this neighbourhood especially.  They are still demolishing old slum property, turning what were cramped living quarters into more spacious dwellings for the great mass of the unhoused and poorly house. In the process, of course, displacing quite a number of people because of the reduction in the total amount of living space available in the quartier.

 

 

After six weeks in the peace and quiet of south-west Scotland it takes me a day or so to adjust to the rhythm and routine of city life. I get myself up to the market to replenish the larder. Lunch is Bleu des Causses cheese, Camembert, salad and pain aux 6 céréales – there’s a huge variety of bread made in boulangeries these days - dark cherries and a nectarine to finish. I begin chopping up the cheese-rind after my lunch then remember I have no bird table to put it on, and certainly no robins and woodpeckers to eat it.

I am absorbed every time I step out into the street by the flood of multi-coloured, struggling humanity: the men standing guard over their little pile of sunglasses, socks and belts laid out for sale on sheets of cardboard on the pavement, (they have to be ready to scarper in an instant if the flics appear. If they’re aren’t quick enough they’ll lose the lot and end up in the local cop shop), the Roma mothers pushing their buggies with one hand and holding out a begging bowl with the other, the various derelicts slumped asleep, dog in tow. The street’s a jumble as well as a jungle. It can be disturbing too, but it is very alive with all those people jinking about to make enough to see them through the day. If Scotland does vote for independence in September perhaps it will import some of them and add them to its home-grown cohorts of the poor and unemployed. It would be good for them and for Scotland, although very unsettling: as challenging as any question of shared currency, NATO/European membership, or where to park those nuclear white elephants that are currently slumbering out their last days in the Holy Loch.

Thinking about our wild-life at Burn House led me to investigate what the website of the Mairie de Paris has to say about ‘le recyclage’ and specifically about composting in the city. After all, seeing how much fresh fruit and veg is sold, every household must generate stacks of good organic rubbish. As you might expect, the website’s got something for everyone, from how to dispose of your old fridge, to the latest attempt by the Mairie to get composting established in the thousands of Parisian immeubles.  There’s quite a push to increase the numbers of households doing ‘lambricompostage’ - composting of organic waste by the use of red worms. That has the virtue of being more apartment-friendly than the traditional ‘wait while it all rots down’ method.

It’s not all worms and struggle here in Paris. The sun is shining brighter than ever as I come to the end of this bulletin. Despite the rumblings of discontent and the real possibility of strikes by les intermittents de spectacle (the people who are employed intermittently in the arts and entertainment industry), there seem to be more festivals than ever, more exhibitions and events, all clamouring for one’s time and attention. This evening for me, it will be Emmanuelle Riva in Duras’ Savannah Bay at the Theatre de l’Atelier in Montmartre. Riva, born 1927 won both the BAFTA and the César Awards for her role in Michael Haneke's Amour in 2012. If you haven’t seen that yet, I suggest you do. It is one of the most moving depictions of love I have ever seen.