Blue Dress Hot Mess

Series: The Paris Diaries: 12/02/25-13/02/25

Notes for the confused reader: Gabriel (Gabe) is a dog, not a child. This is a collection of pieces from my notebook, typed up; as such, some is written in real-time, some with the benefit of hindsight. It is fragmentary, but so is my mind. If something says (FA) in brackets, read: French Accent.

The notebook I’m writing in was always meant to be The Paris Notebook. I said so to my friend when I saw it in a little shop in Venice in Summer 2024. I had Covid, and my mother had just lost her seat in a snap election. I suppose I knew then what took months for me to really realise; this is to be my Paris notebook. In order for it to be so, I have to go to Paris.

I came downstairs to Gabriel sitting on my suitcase. Nothing could have been more perfect. Despite the fact that it was before 7 o’clock in the morning (and therefore a semi-unreasonable time to rise), despite our delay leaving home because the puppy chose that exact moment to take his lead between his little teeth and, literally, run with it; despite the wrong turns towards Folkestone and the traffic jams, the headache, and the lady at French passport control who wouldn’t lean far enough out of her booth to take the passport from my outstretched, straining fingers — despite it all, here we are, crouched behind the wheel of my Polo on the 11:16 am EuroTunnel LeShuttle to Calais. I am going to Paris. I do believe that dreams can come true. I do believe you must simply make them. (I do acknowledge that it isn’t always that simple).

Gabe started squeaking from the boot, so I started singing ‘Slipping Through My Fingers’ to him. I think it was to keep myself company as much as to quieten the dog. My voice is high and unusually soft against the un-oiled noises of the train tracks (I can’t sing). I smiled at myself in the rear-view mirror. I saw through my own pretense as easily as one of those annoying children who never believed in fairytales, and ruins it all for the rest of the class. Lullabies shouldn’t be reserved only for children and puppies.

Gabe is looking confused on the train to Paris. It has been a day of so many firsts, for him and for me. The conductor in the EuroTunnel tapped on my windscreen as I re-ignited my engine (handbrake off, out of first gear, windows up), and told me to have a wonderful time; he said to “be brave”. I felt tears spiking behind my eyes, and knew that if I let even a single one fall I wouldn’t have a chance of survival for the rest of the day. I was (then) yet to conquer Calais, let alone Paris. It was, though, exactly what I needed to hear. I have a feeling his words will stick with me. I drove on the wrong side of the road, up a motorway, round three roundabouts. I parked my car, 100% dodgily in a back-street hotel, and spoke adequate enough French for the people on the reception desk to understand that they’d sent me the wrong code to the ‘private’ parking gate. I ordered Gabe a train ticket, and prayed without stopping during a three hour journey that he didn’t pee on the train.

He didn’t. My flat is beautiful, set back in a courtyard along a street of high-end antique shops. My building seems to be owned by a scary propriétrice (FA) with rouge-wash hair and a maroon Mini Cooper from the 60s. There’s a lovely lady with a divine leopard trench coat who keeps chihuahuas on the first floor. I am on the top floor, which is proving an issue. Gabriel refuses to go to the loo at all, except on the Deuxième étage where apparently someone’s unassuming doormat is the next best thing to grass (it’s happened twice, and we’ve been here less than two hours. Why that doormat, I’d like to know. We walk past at least ten others before we reach that one). We were stopped on the street by and man and his son, who had been debating the “race” (FA) of my petit chien. I pleased them both, by saying he was a (perfect, in my opinion) “mélange d’un cocker et un King Charles”. They were both right. Gabriel, freed from his swaddling bands (my enormous puffer coat) which the security men at the Gare du Nord insisted I wrap him in before getting in a taxi, since the taxi-man didn’t want ‘fourrure’ all over his back seat (I’d like to have said I’m sure he’s had much worse, but I was tired and didn’t want to get my French wrong and thereby nullify my snide remarques (FA)), pranced prettily past a bar-full of Influencers, and has since been stopped three times in the space of 24-hours. (Notably, it is often older gentlemen of a certain style (smart jackets, tortoiseshell glasses, polished shoes) who tell me they once owned “un King-Charles” (said very quickly, like it’s one word). I won’t read too much into it).

The lady with the chihuahuas said ‘Gabriel’ was like Emily’s boyfriend in ‘Emily in Paris’. I said ‘oui’, and looked coy. She smiled, and told me that my Gabriel was much better looking. Désolé, Lucas Bravo. (You’re not so bad yourself though, really).