Blue Dress Hot Mess

Series: The Paris Diaries: 21/02/25-22/02/25

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.

21/02/25:
Edouard is dishy, at least 40, wears tortoiseshell glasses (of course he does) and a large tweed coat. I speak to him in French, but he speaks perfect English (he was naughty at school, and instead of redoublé-ing a year his parents sent him in great umbrage to Catholic boarding school in Herefordshire for a term). He, too, is a writer – I asked of what, and he looked at me earnestly, like a boy of about five, with tousled hair and mud on his cheeks: “Bahh (FA) de l’amour, of course. Quoi d’autre?” (shrug). I smiled. It felt suddenly indecent, to be talking of love in a top floor flat in the 6ème of Paris with a man of about 40 and no connection to the outside world (he was there to fix the WiFi, which – between the thrilling installments of filling each other in on our years on this earth lived in separation – he duly did. It is now broken again, but that can’t be his fault). My indecent feelings were not aided by the fact that my knickers were all in a row along the back of the sofa, drying in the heat of the afternoon sunshine which streaked through the windows of my flat instead of crumpled along the backs chairs. You mustn’t air your dirty laundry. This man appeared rich – I am living in his flat, and it is very nice – single – no wedding ring – a businessman – he had just returned from Belgium, where apparently they were experiencing ‘un cold-snap’ (FA) – a writer – of two, almost three (unpublished) novels – and a man who took an interest in me. He was going to have dinner with his little sister, and amused me by saying that her boyfriend was still cherching for the ring (his disapproval radiated in waves; his little sister was surely over 35, and he clearly felt the boyfriend had been searching for this ring for a year (perhaps two) too long). He might send me his (unpublished) second novel. He wanted my opinion, honnêtement. The novels are in French: I told him to translate them. I might look it over in French, I said, but my own language limits may have an effect on any opinions (honnête or otherwise) I then shared with him. We spoke of waking in the night, of the peril’s of writer’s block and the self-induced insomnia of the busy, restless mind. All the while he sat on my (his) sofa, and let Gabriel chew his finger-tips. Eventually, he fixed the WiFi. A part of me hopes our relationship will last longer than the WiFi did. He was the kind of man one could talk to; he talked to me about the nightclubs of Oxford in 1998. Quel horreur (FA), I reminded him: I had not been alive.

It seems suddenly shocking to me that I could have taken life so lightly. That I’ve idled away hours, days, when every second here feels like some kind of discovery. Even listening to a podcast feels a waste of time. People walk past in headphones, and I want to implore them with all my might to stop, and look, and listen, listen to Paris!

22/02/25:
The rain pings off the skylight. I am in an air raid shelter in World War II – Ukraine flashes through my head, very real – and I do not feel safe. I huddle tighter under the bedclothes. Death rushes at a hundred miles an hour — it stops with a breathless: thud — and echoes around the room like the sound beat in the cinema, pulsing waves away from the tattoo it thh-rrrums on the window. I hear it as an African drum.

I am awake.

My hair falls like a lion’s mane when it is wet. I considered calling Gabriel ‘Aslan’. Perhaps it suits me better than it would have suited him.

There is something about having a good white wine and profiteroles at lunch which makes a girl happy. Paris is sunny again – all blue like the Virgin Mother – which helps. My family are here for the weekend, with our Ukrainian friend and her boyfriend (they hold hands all the time, never letting each other go, even at lunch. They are still very new – since October, but really only a month – and that explains it). We ate at Chartier. We drank red and white wine, and queued for over an hour. It was worth it. It rained and rained this morning, much more than it has done so far. It made me smile, all the pouring rain and big umbrellas and streaks of headlights down the Boulevards like it was 2 o’clock in the morning. We went to the Gainsbourg museum this morning, which made me want to cut a fringe like Jane Birkin. It would not suit me.

We saw a well-dressed French lady buying herself a kebab from a stall just off the Boulvard Saint-Germain for her Saturday lunch. It made me laugh in the rain. Perhaps I am unkind. I wasn’t laughing at her, so much as at the unlikelihood of her straight, knee-length pink skirt in a shop designed for the shadow of students at 3am.

We are going out for dinner also. Tomorrow, we may have oysters from the little stall at the end of my road. They smell disgusting, but I know they will taste like sea-salt and white wine. Lemon juice does that to fish.