Paris bulletin December 2019

It is 17^th December. France’s general strike continues and today sees the second big demonstration against the proposed reforms to the pension system. I am invited for lunch with friends in a brasserie on the rue de Turenne in the Marais. I set off on foot. There will be no buses going my way and 90% of the metro stations are shut, the iron grilles down on their entrances. It has been like this for a fortnight and neither side shows any sign of giving way. All of us are walking a lot more than we usually do. 

I've put my umbrella in my bag - a wise precaution given how wet this autumn has been - but there's no sign of rain and the temperature is unseasonably high.The bike lanes are busy and there are no bikes sitting idly in their vélib bornes. Some aspects of Paris life are doing OK. Others, like the musées and the shops tell a less positive story. I was in a deserted Pompidou Centre a week ago, had the entire Boltanski exhibition almost entirely to myself and then in the Greco at the Grand Palais yesterday - no need to queue and oceans of space to spend time in front of those extraordinarily modern paintings. 

By the time we part after a very good lunch in the cafe des Musées, crowds of demonstrators are streaming past the café door on their way to République, the start of this particular march. In no time at all and well before I reach the rue de Turbigo which leads into République, I can hardly move forward. I am going against the flow, trying to get across the city and back to Chapelle. Up ahead there is smoke and I wonder for a moment if I’m going to feel the sting of tear gas. There have  been rumours that les black blocks, les anars will be out to ‘make trouble’. No sign at all of them but the chants are growing louder, the drum-beats echoing off the walls. What half an hour ago were handfuls of heavily armoured CRS and police have coalesced into solid black lines, three men deep. On my way to my lunch date I had seen dozens and dozens of white vans of the CRS parked up along the main roads. Since then they’ve turfed their occupants out onto the streets and they’re standing ready, booted and spurred, visors down and batons to hand. 

As I keep pushing through the placards and people I’m thinking about the last demo I was in – 19^thOctober the London People’s March for a second vote on Brexit. There were lots of kids at that one. There are none that I can see here. But you wouldn’t bring a child into what feels like a tense and threatening situation. This is no British-style demonstration with men dressed up as teddy-bears and funny hats and joky placards. This demo feels deadly serious - and angry. It has brought together cheminots and social workers, doctors, some in white coats, and teachers - a vast swathe of French society that wants to be heard, that insists it must be heard. But so far isn’t. And that makes me think again of our buoyant hopes on 19^th October when another outcome for the UK still seemed possible. 

It is hard to find a Christmas message of love and resilience in among such conflict but that is the main reason for this bulletin in the dying days of 2019. I send you best wishes for 2020. Keep going! Ne lâchez pas! There will be better days ahead. 

Clouds over the Solway Firth 

Paris bulletin September 2019

The last day of September and after more than a year of no Paris bulletins why do I decide that I will write one? Because it feels important to tell a different story from the hate-filled ones that are crowding out the airwaves and the print media. Because however small and insignificant in the grander scheme of things, what I have to tell is important, celebrating growth of a healthier kind. 

On Saturday 28 September in the cour du Maroc where we serve breakfast to hundreds of refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants, we held one of our seasonal fêtes. This one had as its title in French ‘Fête des Vents Porteurs’. Since there is no obvious English translation for ‘les vents porteurs’ it was decided to go with ‘Rise up with the wind’. As it happened the title was appropriate: there was a good breeze which kept the clouds moving on and gave life and energy to our flag and later in the morning to the ‘manches à air’- windsocks - painted on fabric, assembled at one of the many creative workshop tables around the cour, then stuck high up on the fence where they still are, billowing about in the sunshine and rain.

Our new flag - signature red teapot just visible

raising one of the wind socks

Behind that high wire fence stands a recently installed industrial container, still not plumbed in and still without electricity but both promised by the mairie. After three long years of hauling hot water from one friendly café or another we shall finally have the means to heat and wash in situ, to store our provisions and the gifts which well-wishers bring.

mixing the pancakes

recording travels and encounters

There is a point of view that says we are colluding with the authorities by setting up in a fixed cabin as if to become a permanent feature of the neighbourhood.  It is however quite possible to accept the help that we have been lobbying for, while still working energetically towards the underlying objective – to play a part in bringing about a more humane, more intelligent global response to the problem of the thousands (soon to be millions) of dispossessed and exiled who arrive at the borders of wealthy countries. 

As well as getting unwanted publicity about the riots, teargas and grenades, Paris has recently featured in the news as the ‘dirty city of Europe’. It is true that our area – but by no means all areas of the city – struggle to keep the pavements clear of rubbish. We do not have a problem with litter at the breakfasts though. These days we have moved over to using paper cups – more expensive and far from perfect ecologically-speaking since they are plastic-coated on the inside, but better than the plastic ones all the same. We encourage the migrants to keep their cups and reuse them for fill-ups and we provide clearly marked bins for them to throw them into.  There’s not a lot to tidy up once we stop at the end of the morning’s service. 

Speaking a poem

a refugee's painted record of the breakfasts

Continuing this theme, on Sunday afternoon I and eight other people, went out on metro line 7 to Aubervilliers to the community theatre.

Underpinning the play we saw was a simple initial question that had been put to a group of eight migrants – ‘What would you do if we gave you the keys of this theatre?’ What those men, coming from all around the Mediterranean basin and the sub-Saharan countries of Africa, decided to do was to tell their story – under the direction of Richard Maxwell; to bring together a composite picture of the hardship and exploitation they endured on land and sea to get to the ‘promised land’ (where, as noted previously, the pavements turn out to be more litter-strewn than paved in gold). The action of the play moves from the stage to a space high up at the back of the auditorium, thus requiring us all to turn and watch from below as best we can (the intention perhaps being to induce a tiny physical inconvenience - no more than that - into the audience’s experience). It is a tale of endurance, loss and at times sheer terror, but ultimately of triumph. The men now live together in a well-functioning squat in Aubervilliers where, though there is still no security, there is solidarity, determination and energy.

This is not the Paris of teargas and burning bus shelters as featured in the gilets jaunes riots, nor the Paris of the school strikes on Fridays. It’s not the Paris of queues snaking round the pyramid of the Louvre ever since the management changed how people get to look at the Mona Lisa, nor the Paris of the FIAC – the foire internationale de l’art contemporain– where rich people get to spend their excess wealth on objects which someone tells them have ‘investment value’. 

This could be called in Zola-esque terms, the underbelly of Paris, except it’s too bold, too strong to be the underbelly of anything. It is indeed more like un vent porteur. Which thought leads me to the bookshelf once again:

‘Oh wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead,

Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

…

             Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! Oh Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’

Amen to that, Percy.