Paris bulletin 5 2016

Out and about in Paris last week with my friend, Pamela Shandel, who took the photos.

  

Pamela's cappuccino et petite madeleine

soldiers consult their map (!) in the courtyard of le centre de danse du Marais

in the courtyard at 41 rue du Temple, watching un cours de flamenco

collage of writers at les cahiers de Colette bookshop on the rue Rambuteau

Brioches pralinées at Pralus on rue Rambuteau

laying the pavés outside le Forum des Halles

heading to the play park at Forum des Halles

It’s that time of year again – the season of dark red cherries, apricots, piles of green and gold mangoes outside the Indian shops on the rue du Faubourg St Denis; a time of reckoning too – the bac started a week ago and from now on until the end of the month there’ll be one spectacle de fin d’année after another, parents wielding cameras and phones, quite a few of them hardly watching at all in their urge to record their child’s performance under the lights. I take my place in the queue to find seats for two of my grandchildren’s shows, the first at the Bouffes du Nord, the second at the Théâtre de Ménilmontant, both of them really excellent, a huge tribute to the work done by children and adults.

I can’t tell you who’s still in and who’s already out of the Euro 2016 competition because I’m not interested in football. What I can say is that since the first match kicked off I have seen enough loutish behaviour on the streets of Paris to last me a very long time. The clusters of tee-shirted men displaying that mix of mouthy bravado and panicky fear make me thankful I’m a woman. Lord of the Flies has been in my mind more than once.

I know the footballing louts are ‘a tiny minority’ and they are by no means only English and Russian, but every time they elbow bystanders out of their way, slap someone round the head, bawl their slogans and tribal songs in the metro, wave their flags in rival supporters’ faces, toss their empty beer cans on the pavement, all of which acts I have personally witnessed, they put another layer of scum on the surface of social life. The story that is circulating of a crowd of English supporters forcing a seven year-old boy begging on the street to drink from a can of lager before they gave him money may well be apocryphal but I don’t find it much of a stretch after some of what I’ve seen.

I know this is a Paris bulletin but exceptional circumstances demand exceptional responses. Two events have dominated the UK front pages this past week: the murder of Jo Cox and the referendum. Both resonate strongly for me here in the 18^th arrondissement where yet another camp of refuges has been established round the corner from my flat on the esplanade Nathalie Sarraute. This after the recent clearing of the camp outside the jardin d’Eole where by the time it was cleared there were 1,300 migrants and refuges from various African and Middle Eastern countries, living in conditions of the most appalling squalor and degradation. I am told that the police have now cleared refugee camps in this area 23 times in the past year. 

Right at this minute the rain is pouring down as it has done with monotonous regularity in both May and June. Hard to imagine what it feels like to lie, (most of the tents are too small to allow you to sit up comfortably), listening to the rain beating down on a thin layer of nylon above your head when it’s not trendy urban camping you’re about, with a hot shower waiting and a change of dry clothes in the cupboard (cf. a recent piece about rooftop camping in Brooklyn in one of the broadsheets).

Another of the effects of these repeated clearings is that in our neighbourhood whole stretches of public space have been cordoned off by the authorities. They include parks as well as pavements and this in an area which is already short of open green spaces for relaxation and play.

Fortunately there are other responses. La cohabitation is a fact of life here. I am proud to live in this area - one of the poorest and most overcrowded of the city - where incomers are seen in their singularity however many they are, where the inhabitants don't stint their efforts to help through the quartiers solidaires network and others like it. 

I posted my ‘IN’ vote a while back. You can stay stuck in inaction and a sense of powerlessness or you can do whatever you can, little as it may be, to counter those whose only solution is to pull up the drawbridge, batten down the hatches or head for the hills… I read a post from some British man yesterday which said that choosing which side to vote for in the referendum is ‘a difficult decision’. Really? Who in their right mind would want to be immured in any kind of fortress with the likes of Farrage or Johnson?

mes géraniums qui font face au mauvais temps