Blue Dress Hot Mess

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

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.

I just opened both my windows and saw a girl standing outside her gallery in a blue felt trench coat, smoking. She held the cigarette lightly between her gloved fingers, as though she didn’t much care for it. I looked at the street (wet). I looked at the sky (blue, patchy puffs of floating cottontails). I looked at the building opposite (sand-coloured, glowing in the evening sunlight). I looked at Gabriel, paws up on the window sill, standing on his back legs, looking at me (supper time, his eyes imploring). I just cracked a manic smile: I still can’t believe it. I get to stay. “I literally, actually can’t believe it”, I say.

I leave the windows open, and choose to ignore the cold. I feed the puppy (not enough, eyes imploring). I smile: I literally, actually can’t believe it.

I am wondering whether to start Gabriel an Instagram. Forget @cressida.valentine, @GabrielàParis (FA) would have far more hits. We have just been stopped 5 times on a walk; he was adored by a bleach-blonde American lady in the street, who followed us in to Gold Goose (gorgeous, but trop cher) where he was adored even more by a male shop attendant with shoulder-length brown hair (avocado shampoo for the sheen, I wondered?). We saw a pair of twins on bikes; they had matching bowl cuts which flicked around their ear lobes, and they wore the same fat-two-slugs for a moustache. I wondered in what ways they were different, and whether it was a fight to be themselves of whether it felt safer, somehow, to go out into the world as a pair. Like doves; or peas; or lovers. They each sat waiting for the lights to change with their left foot on the pedal and the bike resting against their standing right leg. Two forward slashes // four blue-jeaned legs.

Is it cat-calling when a young Frenchman (FA, so read: Fronch-mann) leans off the side of his bike to call “Nice dog” (heavy FA: do-gg, emphasis on the ‘g’) at you as you wait to cross the road at 8 o’clock at night in front of a sparkling Eiffel Tower? It is definitely dog-calling, but that lacks the ring. Perhaps this is the modern, acceptable version of ‘petting’? I wonder what would constitute ‘heavy petting’ in that case. Maybe if he asked me on a date.

Paris by night is unspeakably beautiful. The sky is clear, I can see stars for the first time, and the buildings are so lit up they look like pop-ups in a children’s book. The sky is never black; it is midnight blue (I must watch ‘Midnight in Paris’; I think it has Owen Wilson in it, which is good because Gabriel liked him in ‘Marley and Me’, though that may have been for other reasons) even at 8pm, even at 2 o’clock in the morning. The beam of the Eiffel Tower is our search light keeping the ships from the rocks. It feels safe, to be walking in Paris. And the only thing a man has approached me for so far has been to ask the way to the nearest tobacconist. Down the rue and à droite, Monseuir. Typical.

25/02/25:

Blue chinos and lilac socks with bicycle clips above the ankles.

I am so wet I have taken off all my clothes and strung them around the flat, dripping. The puppy has had his first (amateur) blow-dry, and now his hair stands on end like he’s been electrocuted. He will sleep all afternoon, oblivious of the rain and the umbrellas and the flooded streets which lie outside his window.

I have just been pottery-painting in the only Potters in 6ème (the lady was proud; she wore a navy-plaid shirt over embellished jeans. She complemented my hoodie: it reads My Ex Is Still In Love With Me in bold beige letters across its back. What it lacks in facts it makes up for in character). The workshop was all rough-sanded beams and clay hand-prints climbing the walls. It was the kind of interior I’d like in my kitchen one day. Everything felt grainy, like un-cooked clay. The lady told me that when I spoke French I sounded just like Jane Birkin – did I know who she was? I said yes, she’s my cousin. Distant, but close enough. The lady was pleased by her canniness, and said that I didn’t look like her, but my voice was sweet and juvenile in French and that it was truly charmante. Jane had been popular in France; perhaps if I were I writer I might be popular too.

I will pick up my mug, all cooked and drinkable-from, in 10 days. It will remind me forever of Paris. It is simple, utterly imperfect, and will taste always of coffee. I will love it; every morning with breakfast, every evening in front of the TV. There’s always a heart in Paris. Il y a toujours un coeur à Paris (FA).