Blue Dress Hot Mess

Series: The Paris Diaries: 06/03/25-08/03/25

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.

06/03/25:

I am a piece of bread. An unconventional beginning I know; I make no apologies: it is an unconventional state of being. But as I sat in Parc Monceau at 3 o’clock on a Thursday afternoon in 17 degree sunshine which warmed my neck but didn’t permeate any deeper into my soul, I was suddenly, very unexpectedly, a piece of bread. The children who stood around me in a small arc were pigeons: they had an expectant look in their small, beady eyes, and if they didn’t coo, they definitely clucked. The object of their clucking was Gabriel, whom they were dead-set on playing with. They eyed me silently, the whites of their eyes forming rings around their pupils. I – the bread – had up until that point very much not been bread. I had been a perfectly content 21 year old girl, wearing a denim skirt on its first outing of the year, painting her nails a cappuccino-brown on a green-painted park bench while simultaneously swigging a ginger beer (which does exist in France, contrary to expectation) from a can and reading the open book which was perched between her knees (it is ‘Jigsaw’, by Sybille Bedford: it is very good but not a simple read, and engages one’s full attention: I was studying it hard, in the depths of the Mediterranean summer with Sybille an adolescent of 15 (it is semi-autobiographical) when I realised I had become the bread: vis-à-vis, I was no longer alone). 

The pigeons made a noise; first one, then another, then the whole flock of them were squawking French at me in high pitched excited voices, making me feel like a piece of bread who had somehow rolled into the Tower of Babel. I felt so under attack that I was, literally, tongue-tied – the words simply did not come (perhaps this was because pieces of bread have no tongues; I didn’t think of such logic in the heat of the moment), in French or in English. I could feel them sticking in my throat, which despite the ginger beer was suddenly very parched. I saw no saviour to my situation; in fact I saw nothing except a ring of navy-uniformed 8 year olds. It is unusual to have school uniform in France; I decided (correctly it turned out – we were in 8me) that their school must be rather posh. Each creature seemed to me to ooze stickiness in a way that only children can, and to be impressively aggressive for people so small and so young. They made up my entire horizon, and while they didn’t fully eclipse the sun (at 3pm, it was still high enough in the sky to peep over their plaited hair in a golden promise of reality existing beyond this barricade of juveniles), I felt the warmth of the day disappear. It was as I was trying to stutter at the very least a “Bonjour” that another – fortunately more adult – high pitched voice penetrated the Tower of Babel from somewhere towards stage-right. It was the pregnant lady I had shared the bench with for a peaceful half hour, prior to feeling like a piece of bread. She wore Breton stripes under a navy wool cardigan, and had been studiously peering at her Kindle through rimless spectacles while absentmindedly rubbing her swollen stomach with her right hand (the baby is a boy, due in May. She is ready for him, but he is her first (she is young); she might call him Raphael. I asked if she’d considered Gabriel). She wore no wedding ring on her left hand, which lay on the park bench between us, absorbing sunlight. Beneath the bump, she had a distinct thinness which no additional human-life forming within her could hide.

She is the saviour; with her curt, clipped, “Vous devez demander à la dame si vous avez le droit de caresser son chien” (You must ask the Madame if you are allowed to pet her dog) she took total control of the situation, and I was no longer either a piece of bread nor under siege by 8 year olds. I was simply the human being at the end of an adored creature’s lead, and I spouted answers to semi-politely asked questions (in squeeky FAs) on repeat and subconsciously, like a GCSE language Oral student who has learnt all her answers by heart. He is 6 months old. He is teething – be careful of his teeth. Do you have a dog? What’s their name? (Charles; Coco; all the classics). He is tired now. (Please leave; they were either too young to take the social cue, or too enamored). I must go. Surely it is the end of your break-time soon? (Desperately).

I gathered my book, threw my ginger beer can in the bin; I said goodbye to the pregnant lady in her Breton stripes, and wished her luck with the baby in May. She told me I was courageous, and that I must follow my dreams. Merci, Madame. Vous êtes très gentille.

The exit route of a piece of bread is not usually remarked upon; it is silent. I left.

07/03/25:

Lucy is here, and we have had Champagne at lunch. I sat with my shoulders getting burnt in the first real rays of hot Spring sunshine, my red back to the Boulevard Saint-Germain, my hands clasped above exposed elbows (sleeves rolled up) which perched rudely on the round restaurant table. On the round table – aside of my elbows – there were two full glasses of citrine Champagne, with channels of bubbles springing to their tops, two glasses of water, a pair of my sunglasses (which I have since broken), and a small vase of dried flowers. Opposite me sat Lucy; dark silk shirt taken from her mother’s wardrobe, black shades on top of her blonde head, jeans, a ‘T’ initial sparkling between her collar bones (I wore a ‘C’ in diamonds between mine; our matching necklace choice was entirely coincidental), and a brown mesh scarf wrapped thinly around her neck like a choker. She wore a smile, though her eyes were lacklustre and tired.

We had a heavenly supper last night in Saint-Honoré – truffle pasta, profiteroles, and Happy Hour Cocktails – and we caught up and gossiped and sat in a Bistro window and walked back through the Louvre under the scant stars in order to take a picture of Lucy in front of the lit-up Tour Eiffel. (It is her first time in Paris; I feel pressured to show her it all, make her love it too, prove how much every part of this city can feed you and sing – and at the same time I am comforted by the fact that she knows; it took her less than five minutes, she said, to see how much I love it, and for my sake to love it for me too. I have changed, she says. I am more myself, so much of which disappeared, somehow, last year. Paris has since proved itself to her; in its handsome men (we have a code-word – which will remain undisclosed – for when we see one in the street; one of us shouts it, the other cranes her neck to catch a glimpse and either concur or raises objections), in its beautiful buildings, in its vintage clothes shops and its first soft-sweet crunch of croissant. It has nothing more to prove, and all at once it has everything more to give). Paris makes one talk. I believe it to be a city of secrets and love. For the latter, it is already well-known. The former it whispers in the Vespers of Notre-Dame, in the rat-race running through the sewers; I hear its secret in the ugliness and I hear it in the beauty. It whispers in those Champagne bubbles and it whispers in the stale smoke of the cigarette which hangs from a beggar’s chapped lips. I hear its whisper, like a child crying in the night. It shows on my face: I hear the noise.

After one sip of Champagne, Lucy’s eyes lose their lacklustre haze. They shine, the way mine do, the way mine haven’t stopped shining for over three weeks now, and I feel them shining the way a girl can feel it when the bun is too tight on top of her head. I am conscious of it, aware of the glisten like unshed tears – “I am 30% likely to cry right now” is Lucy’s catchphrase of the trip, as she stares in wonder at this: at my home: at Paris.

We spend lunchtime talking of heartbreak and love, of wasted chances (other people’s; according to ourselves, we have grabbed all that have come our way) and of the sheer pleasure of being alone. After lunch we go to a Pharmacy, retreat scared from the stocked, over-packed shelves, and find solace in the purchase of two Camemberts, a bottle of Champagne, and two enormous slabs of chocolate mousse cake which Lucy nibbles the tips of in the street as we walk home. We go to the Galeries Lafayette in the evening and watch all of Paris lie at our feet the same way we have done this morning from the birds-eye view of Sacré-Cœur. We flick through endless fur coats in vintage shops which smell of dust and we drink cocktails and wine in the evening with my cousins, sitting in another Bistro and chatting, chatting, about life and people and living. We are living in Paris; our lives are simple ones. They are best shared with shining eyes and full glasses, our pasts very far away, our futures in the fleeting eye-contact of a handsome man (code still undisclosed), and, really, in our own hands. Two girls, on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Two girls, two cousins, a Frenchboy coming for cocktails and Camembert at 6:30 tonight. C’est samedi soir. C’est ma vie.