Blue Dress Hot Mess

Series: The Paris Diaries: 17/02/25

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.

It is only 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and I have had one of the happiest days of my life. Gabriel and I found heaven at the top of the steps of Montmartre. Maybe being that bit closer to God really does help? I have postcards, and photo-booth pictures, and a caricature which over-mphasises my bunny-rabbit teeth. (Perhaps I am being vain; the man said smile, bigger (FA), so I did. I have always been insecure about them, but I suppose the point of a caricature is to over-exaggerate one’s insecurities). The artist was called Bombas, or something which sounded like Thomas (FA) but definitely began with a ‘B’. I have looked it up, and ‘Bombas’ derives from the Latin of ‘bumblebee’, which in a funny way rather suits him. He had at least fifteen charcoal pencils in each of the five pockets of his jacket. Before he did caricatures in the Place du Tertre, he was an engineer. A more practical career, I suggested, and he agreed with a gruff nod of his head. He gave me a Lindt chocolate square, and put Louis Vuitton and a heart on Gabriel’s jumper in the drawing.

I am sitting in the sunshine outside a cafe in Montmartre. I can’t actually remember if this is the first time I have been to a cafe alone, but if it is, I like it. It makes me feel like a woman of the world. Perhaps it helps that I ordered in French, so they’re nicer to me than they are to the family of tourists to my left, who are chewing sweets and taking forever over the menu, then only ordering some cappuccinos and ‘soda’. Montmartre is very busy, and the air smells like burnt crêpes and cigarettes. I have ordered a ‘chocolat viennois’ (with whipped cream), and the dog is sitting on my feet. We will have our portrait done after this, because I’ve always wanted to but never dared, and because I have exactly 20 euros in cash left in the world. It may as well go on something I can keep. Gabriel has whipped cream on his nose. I suppose I have become one of those girls who sits in cafes and feeds her dog cream (though I have still never bought him a puppuccino). I don’t think I mind it, if I have; Gabriel certainly doesn’t. There are artists in the square in front of me, and a writer has just sat down to my right. (When we started talking, it transpired he was a businessman, but he wrote novels on the side. He adored Gabe, and noted down the title of the book I was reading (John Berger’s ‘Ways of Seeing’) as though reading it would improve him on a deep, profoundly personal level (his eyebrows crossed in concentration as he wrote the title, very slowly and in English, in his notepad). When I stood up to leave he wished me “bonne chance!” — in writing, love, or life?). I am caught in between – the art, the words – feeding cream to my dog off the end of my finger and smiling to myself. The sunshine is beautiful, hot, so warm on my face I feel like a baking bun. I think this is what it must be like to be skiing, but our slope is the hill of Montmartre, and my vin chaud is definitely hot chocolate. It is a beautiful day; the best. I feel like I’m floating in some kind of heaven, like this girl I am isn’t fully my own – and the nice waiter (he has mad curly dark hair – perhaps he’s a cherub in my heaven – and can’t be any older than 16) has just told me I’m allowed inside with the dog to go to the loo. Otherwise I was going to have to interrupt the writer (who isn’t, always) and ask him to “garder mon chien”. He has an indulgent smile, but a serious air. He is now wearing headphones and his glasses (tortoiseshell) are half-way up his forehead. I am still smiling in the sunshine. I have no desire to leave. 

Perhaps this purgatory state (in the cleansing rather than Catholic sense) might last forever; I never want this limbo period to end, so please don’t pray me out of it (in the Catholic, rather than cleansing, way). You’re so young, at twenty-one. Yet today I felt entirely age-less. Any chance encounter can change a life. I need a job; but I want to write. In fact, I want to sit here with the puppy on my knee (he is exhausted from our walk, so he is making a noise like a aged French smoker) and the promise of Paris outside my window, writing, forever. You may bury me here, Monsieur Garçon with the curly dark hair, with a crown of whipped cream on my grave.