Blue Dress Hot Mess

Series: The Paris Diaries: 17/03/25-18/03/25

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.

17/03/25:

Montmartre is quiet on a day like today. Monday morning, tourists only, cold sunshine and the sound of seagulls. I have heard remarkably few seagulls since being in Paris. England is overrun with them. Montmartre smells – weirdly, but not unpleasantly – of chips. Perhaps in my fantasies I am by the English sea. (I would rather be in Montmartre; I can feel the sunshine on my face and I am wearing sunglasses in March. That doesn’t happen in England, unless you’re driving). I have just paid nearly €12 for a hot chocolate. It had better be good. Regardless, I will enjoy every one-euro sip. The woman serving me is (stereo)typically Parisienne (FA – she has a thick one): she does not care about her customers, she is rude, and she has bleach blonde hair which is greasy and scraped back into a ponytail, looped into the hairband underneath to make it into a tiny churros-shaped bun. Between shouting at the man in the rue about parking his van in front of her coffee shop, she sniffs; everyone in Paris seems suddenly ill. 

The American tourists next to me are dull; they are young. They are so dull I didn’t think it worth exposing my Englishness to them, preferring to maintain the shreds of the mysterious French. As a result, I didn’t even glance at their faces. I make an image of them in my head based on their voices alone; and on her coffee order – a pistachio oat-milk ice latte. (It is 8 degrees outside). The girl says this might be their last trip before having ‘kids’. Apparently they have said that for their last three trips, but now that her best friend is settling down… I think she is hinting; her boyfriend studiously misses the hint – he seems too dumb to pick up on it, but I am very rude and most likely overly judgmental; perhaps his stuffed vanilla croissant was just so good he was too distracted to listen. That I know is a male trait. He says they’ll probably say that on their next trip; and the one after that, too. She sits silently for a minute, eating her croissant. Her latte glass is empty in front of her. She changes tack; “we should – like – I don’t know – do sunset by the Eiffel Tower. And eat cheese or something”. I think that that sounds like a better idea than having children, even if it is inelegantly proposed.  

My hot chocolate arrives. It smells heavenly, is weighty with cream, and has brownies stuck on its top. The girl says “ohmigod look at that” (AA: American Accent) and I smile down at my writing and pretend to be French. 

I have cream on my nose. It is one of those drinks which by the time you actually get to the hot chocolate underneath all its fancy clothing, it will be cold and a little too sweet despite its little cap of cream. It tastes delicious, but I could drink it in less than a minute. The mug is smaller than my hand. €12 a minute. I will try to savour it a bit. 

It has gone. Underwhelmingly, but deliciously. I feel full of melted chocolate. There are worse states of being. I wonder at things: I am sitting in a window seat on a high bar stool. We are in a cafe on the Rue Montmartre, amusingly near the Rue du Croissant. Mid-March already, and all the people are still wearing their scarves. (They have reason to; behind the sunshine, God has not yet switched on the heating). I wonder whether they enjoy it, those American tourists. I wonder how much they see the city like I see the city. They are getting the metro from here to Notre-Dame (AA: Notre-Daame, like the transvestite in the Pantomime), then they plan to go to the Cafe de Flore for lunch. (It is hard not to listen to their plans, when I am sitting so silently and they are chatting so dully, so un-intimately to my right. If I were on holiday with a lover, I would feel a pool of emptiness at this breakfast-date. Never have two people seemed so far away; perhaps space and intimacy are interlinked on an imperceptible, incommunicable level. I should ask no questions of their relationship; I wonder only if they see the city as I see the city. There the bounds of my wonderment must cease, or it touches on judgement, and that is not the place of a girl drinking hot chocolate in a cafe in France. Not my place). On the metro: the walk is less than 30 minutes. The sun is out. The day is very beautiful, the city ever more so. They would do better to walk. On the lunch: they will be lucky to get it. It is already midday, and the queue will by this time be an hour long. It is famous on Instagram, why I don’t know. I am sure it is lovely, but not for lunch on a Monday. I feel a little sick from the chocolate, so I think it is time to leave. My empty mug (too small, too small) is sitting in front of me, and the dregs I haven’t managed to lick up waft a sweet odour up my nose which makes my stomach knot. Either I want another – but, God, not for €12 – or I must clear my mug and leave. Gabriel and I are going home, to relax. I mourn my lack of a balcony. I would like to sit and read and drink the remains of some pink wine (which is more white than pink: apparently this is a good thing, in some cases) which my family and I opened on Saturday before dinner.

I am reading Agatha Christie; sometimes, even in Paris, one seeks an escape.

18/03/25:

It is going to be a beautiful day. Gabriel and I stood waiting for the lift and watched a plane chuff a snail’s trail of chalk across the pastel blue sky. The air is light — morning. The street is not sleepy but full, for once, of lorries, smokers, people. Some eat sandwiches from the boulangerie (it is not yet 10 o’clock). Two of the art gallery owners are dressed especially well this morning – shiny shoes, black suits – and stand opposite the oyster stall (inactive) smoking and discussing their clients communs (FA); the man whose little son often comes to work with him and sits behind the desk eating crisps while surrounded by crucifixes and medieval altars nods me ‘Good morning’. I smile: we belong. Two mega (undisclosed secret word for very attractive Fronchmenn (FA)) with matcha in take-away mugs spotted at 9:46am on the Rue du Bac: I must text Lucy. They admired Gabe; I blushed. (Does the matcha and excessively fashionable clothing imply they may have been more interested in each other than in me? It doesn’t bear thinking about. They shone sunshine into my morning — or was that the blue sky?).

I walked past a yew box hedge in the Palais du Louvre and was reminded of England. I saw policemen on roller skates and was reminded that I am very much not in England. I stumbled across a market between the division barriers of a boulevard on a Tuesday morning in a little pocket of Paris. It smelt of fish and dried apricots, and fresh pasta, and enormous French tomatoes, and – to me – it smelt like heaven.