Blue Dress Hot Mess

Series: The Paris Diaries: 18/03/25-19/03/25

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.

If I were to write a memoir I might call it: turn your face towards the sun. 

I am writing things I know to be true, to keep me grounded in today, in now. Otherwise I will worry; the future — too big. Saturday (my Leaving Day) — too near. Home — here?

I am sitting on a bench in the Palais-Royal. Gabriel is eating sticks beneath me. I am drinking an iced matcha latte, because it is going to be 17 degrees today. I wear a bandana – blue silk – and sunglasses. I am trying to read Agatha Christie, but am too absorbed in this; this life, this world, this sunshine in the morning on a Wednesday, and the grassy taste of my drink, and watching the beggar take a drugged dip in the fountain. Smart French children play in the gardens – loudly. They wear Nike-tick trainers and the girls have pigtails and lace skirts. It makes me think of picnics (and a Boden catalogue); stick sword-fights now (with the few sticks Gabe hasn’t chewed); tears – she fell in the dust; he wouldn’t share; she’s hungry. The littlest girl tries to scratch her initials onto the bark of a tree. They are pot-bellied children, cashmere jumpers, woollen tights. They arrived on a bike, tandem (for three?), and their mother is dressed in black leather from thin olive-skinned neck to pointed snake-skinned toe. Their grandfather has gone to fetch her a coffee. 

Perhaps I would call my memoir: Two Empty Chairs. Two Empty Chairs sit around the fountain; expectant of occupancy, expectant of spectacle? They face the beggar, who still splashes. One of the children – the boy – is about to climb in to join him. I am far removed; at least I feel it, though I sit no more than 50 metres away. A man sits in one of my Two Empty Chairs. He looks young – though I see only the back of his dark-haired head. He puts his feet up – navy suede trainers, Adidas – on the marble-smooth rim of the fountain’s edge, and sits. He does nothing. He stares. He does not read, does not write, he does not even look at his phone. The Empty Chair to his left remains empty. I wonder romantically if it is meant for me. I might fill it – talk to him. We met beside the fountain in the Palais-Royal. I wrote; he stared. The beggar drips, and begins to take off his clothes. A girl in yoga pants has removed the Empty Chair meant for me, and has dragged it across the gravel to sit with her friend and eat pastries. We did not meet by the fountain in the Palais-Royal. We did not meet at all, in fact. He is a dark head on a sunny Wednesday. Far away (50 metres). 

I have been joined on my bench by the waiter from the cafe next door. He has lit a cigarette, and the smoke tickles my nose. He glances my way occasionally – the back of the bench between us like a toi et moi ring. The sun grows hotter; Gabriel begins to sleep. The mother (in black) has lost one of her children – the littlest, who was scratching her name on the tree. It is always the youngest who is left behind; in trouble; naughty. She is still lost; I cannot see her. I know only too well how she feels. 

I walked through bubbles in the Palais du Louvre. They floated up from the end of a soapy wand held by a little girl in a pink cardigan towards some firemen who were dancing to the busker playing an electro-guitar version of Coldplay’s ‘Rule the World’ (Viva La Vida) under the arches. All the shops have changed their window displays; like daffodils, like blossom, like the sound of a lawn-mower again, it is a visible changing of the seasons. I see Spring Collections now. Winter is dead in the night. We were chatted up by a man in the Jardins du Carrousel. He was doing exercises which were grotesquely – overtly – sexual, and which mirrored the statues – L’Air – of Aristide Maillol which hover around the gardens with their legs raised and their arms stretched wide. I was taken aback, because, for once, he took an interest in me rather than in my dog (although it was our dogs which brought us together; he had two barrel-like Staffies who sniffed Gabriel’s bottom). He has grey hair, a beard (salt-and-pepper), and a silver cross necklace. He is pirate-like. Early-forties. He likes my coat. We walked on.

The magnolia blossom is a Japanese cherry pink. It is indescribably beautiful, and it is not yet fully bloomed. There is a pigeon in the branches of the tree above our heads; Gabriel – awake and eating twigs again – watches it with the absorption of a Pointer. 

The sun grows hotter. I undo my coat, and I finish my drink. (It has taken me a whole half hour to drink it, which makes it worth it, somehow. I am distracted by writing; watching. It tastes Spring-like and fresh. Iced). I do not know if they found the littlest girl. She is a small body in my story. She is a big life.