Blue Dress Hot Mess

Series: The Paris Diaries: 23/02/25-24/02/25

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.

23/02/25:
I have a rash a red-raw as a tomato. (If I were being literary and affected I would write that my rash is as red-raw as a radish, but I think that is over-aspirational. Either a radish, or, if, I were writing farce, as red-raw as a baboon’s bottom. Tomato is the least offensive simile). I am covered in it, from neck to ankles, and am being made sleepy and stupid by antihistamine.

I am pleased with my outfit today, which is good, because my skin is so itchy I have no desire to inhabit it any longer. At least it is encased on the outside with something that bears no resemblance to the itching fire within. I am wearing black trousers, a black polo neck (to cover the rash), and a white and red striped shirt nipped in at the waist by a black belt with gold seashell buckles. My necklace is a chunky black and gold hooped chain from Ralph Lauren. I have small pearls in my ears. I think I must look a little like one of those sketched mannequins in a ’50s home-making magazine. It is sunny – hallelujah – so outside I wear sunglasses.

A lady in the loos in Chartier yesterday asked – en Francais (FA) – if I had a fashion line. I thought I’d misunderstood (while it seemed more likely that this middle-aged lady was asking if I had a line of clothes rather than any other kind of line people occasionally share in restaurant loos, I still saw it as a long shot), and asked her to “répétez, s’il vous plaît“: definitely a fashion ‘ligne‘ (FA). I replied in the humble (and British-ly stuttering) negative, and went back to our table very proud to announce this encounter to my family. (The lady had no hair, and a thick line of sparkly blue eyeliner lay like a slug beneath her lower lashes. Make of this what you will. I will choose to retain the complement).

It is Sunday, and I am meeting my parents for lunch (again). That will make three lunches out in row. How très Parisienne of me (FA). We plan to go to La Messe in Notre-Dame ce soir. It will be beautiful. And it will smell like candles, which is one of my favourite scents. (We went for Vespers in Notre-Dame; it whispered, like its name, and smelt of incense and cleanliness which is ubiquitous to cathedrals all over the world. It looked beautiful, all columns and chandeliers).

24/02/25:
It is 3 years since the Ukrainian War. I thank God for the presence of Ukrainians in our lives, and feel endlessly lucky to have had them brought to us. For their sakes, I wish we had never had to meet them.

I assume the first pull of a morning cigarette is like the first draught of coffee; heady in its earthiness. Light in its dark dark depths.

I am alone once more. The world smells like cinnamon and peppermint (I am drinking tea), and my hair is wet and curly and falls in spirals down my back (it rains outside, and Gabriel lies with his head stretched away from his paws on the sofa, watching the drips tumble and streak down our window pane. I consider opening a Club called ‘Tumble and Streak’ because I think it leaves all kinds to the imagination. The thought is fleeting. It slides like a raindrop on the glass through my mind). We queued outside Sainte-Chapelle for over an hour and never made it inside. We went to lunch instead: I got there first and got us a table of four in the window, where I sat reading the drinks menu with Gabriel eating left-over chips from the floor at my feet. We watched the rain. We watched my family – some of them at least – stand at the crossing in the rain and wave arms-full of black shopping bags (“I think I might go back for those shoes”; “really, you are lucky to live so near all these nice shops”) at me through the window (in the rain). We watched them cross the road and rush into the Bistro, blowing in like the shake of their umbrellas through the double-swing doors. At this point we stopped watching them and ate with them instead – a burger with frites, followed by a large pile of ice cream and coffee sauce with a crown of whipped cream sitting like a party hat on a drunk on top. (Gabriel licked the whipped cream off my spoon). It did not feel like it was raining in the restaurant; we were happy and eating and full and talking and Gabriel didn’t drink all the water the waiter brought him so he didn’t whine or need the loo, so we sat and ate and had a farewell (to them) déjeuner in Paris, and all the while it rained. After lunch we said “goodbye” to the good-looking waiter (his hair was the colour of a Werther’s Original, and my sister would like me to marry him), and went shopping. My sister was the only one who bought anything – except, I suppose, me, because my mother kindly bought me some loo roll. It was raining when we got back to the flat, and I still have no WiFi.

Now I am alone once more; it isn’t raining. Gabriel is curled in a wet snail-like ball on the sofa, and my hair is wet, and I am drinking peppermint tea.

It will rain again tomorrow, I am sure.