Blue Dress Hot Mess

Series: The Paris Diaries: 21/03/25-22/03/25

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.

21/03/25:

We walked along the Seine. Not laughing in the rain. Fighting tears under the clouds.

I got home and cried.

There were two endings to The Paris Diaries: the first, very real. Too sad — I thought — for publication. The second is happier, more dramatic, less contemplative. Both are true.

Over half my Venetian pink marble notebook; 43 pages of single-spaced A4 on a Word document. The Paris Diaries; my record of the first time I have made a home for myself, alone, in a country I have always pretended I spoke the language of. It is my notebook of memories – souvenirs – sweetly, in French.

I’ll give you some of the First Ending: it is one of lessons and learning.

I know now that I’ve got to stop living like I won’t live for long. I remember when the feeling came – two summers ago, in the Loire (serendipitous that it, too, hit me in France?) – and I haven’t been able to shake it. I remember feeling an overwhelm so loud it screamed; as though this moment was suddenly a crunch-time for something, and I didn’t know what, and was in fact quite sure that it wasn’t but no amount of telling myself so turned off the scream in my brain. I texted my friend: mini-early life crisis. But now I see that I must live as I hope: that life will be long, and that perhaps one day I’ll live in Paris in one of those large houses on the île Saint-Louis with a balcony on every window and a tiny square courtyard for a garden, and I’ll be the kind of French “Madame” (fully matured into my title by then) who drives her vintage Range Rover Vogue down thin Parisien streets. There is so much excitement ahead of me, and there are so many more adventures. I just know that I have never been so consistently happy as I have been here. I have never known myself better. I have never loved living – every day, the art of creating a simple day – more.

I tried to read my notebook, to remember how I felt on the first day I arrived. I got through less than half a page before the tears came. I will have to remain the inconnue when it comes to my own writing; the author of the Paris Diaries who cannot bring herself to read them back.

I am writing what I am looking forward to, because it isn’t as though I don’t want to go home, only that I don’t want to leave here. I am excited: to give Gabriel a proper bath, to pluck my eyebrows (I’ve had no tweezers in France), to see my pony and my cat again; to go to Yorkshire with my family, and to host dinner parties for Easter; to do some baking, and some thinking; to help friends move house, and to work out what I want to do with my life. Or maybe just what happens in the next chapter. That feels easier to write. There will be more Diaries; America, perhaps; London. And in my dreams there will be Paris again. Because this city won’t sink.

After all, some things are simple. I am in Paris. I have been in Paris. And one other fact is true: You can’t be in Paris without Vogue. But Vogue had to stay in Paris; my suitcase was so full it didn’t make the journey home.

It is raining on my final night. There are thunderstorm warnings on the French news, and I sit quietly with Gabriel in my flat listening to the rain trickle down the drain outside my window.

I’ll give you some of the Second Ending: it is one of events and reality.

22/03/25:

Our leaving day. The dog is wet, and therefore mad. I eat a pistachio croissant; drink coffee; bought a cupcake. The suitcase won’t close. A sign? I’m not crying Paris – you are.

The taxi man told me there are more cheeses in France than there are days in the year. We talked all the way to the Gare du Nord. It rained. I have bought a yoghurt, and I have bought Gabriel a train ticket (€7 this time, rather than €22). I think we are on the train to Calais. I hope we are on the train to Calais. It doesn’t leave for another 25 minutes. The man in the seats across from me keeps polishing his shoes. They are red and white Nike booties – very clean (unsurprisingly). Gabriel hasn’t weeded since outside my apartment gates. That will make over five hours, if he lasts the train. I hope to God he does. (He does, just). I am not thinking about the fact that I’m going home – leaving Paris (who weeps at my departure, I like to think). I am thinking only about the journey, stage by stage, one step at a time. It started with finding breakfast, drying the dog, sitting on the broken suitcase to close it. I booked the Uber, left the key on the kitchen table – didn’t shed a tear (too many bags, too strong a puppy pulling me out the door). A nice girl held Gabe while I humped my suitcase down the front steps (I had sent it down in the lift, alone, while Gabriel and I dashed down the stairs). We took the taxi in the rain, sighed at Paris through the drops on the window, spoke about French cheese and the best regions of France for wine (Burgundy, my driver was adamant; he likes Beaujolais). We got out in a traffic jam outside the Gare du Nord, and asked a bored-looking policewoman where to buy a ticket for the dog. (She was unhelpful; I worked it out myself). We found food (for me; Gabriel licked the station’s floor, which he assures me is delicious), and watched for the platform number to appear on the screens. Lots of people waited. I hope we followed them to the right platform.

Three young men have chosen to sit around me, despite the one nearest appearing to be a little scared of dogs. (Gabe is eating his laces, so perhaps I can’t blame him). They talk to me, wiggle fingers at Gabe (who chases his tail to show off). They talk to the man with the polished red and white booties, I think about hashish, but I’m not sure. Then one of them tries to steal my handbag, so the nice girl who had smiled supportively at me through the seats in front comes to sit with me in my section of 4 (I take up 3 spaces; two bags, suitcase, dog, me – notebook open on my knees). She has seahorse earrings, and is a dancer and an actress. She is 25. Blonde hair. (Later, she will help me with my suitcase to find another seat, because she doesn’t want to leave me with the men who stare at us and steal handbags. I told the man who tried to steal my handbag “No” very firmly, and grabbed it back off him; I am glad he didn’t steal it. The Paris Diary, itself, was inside. So was my passport, car keys, money, and the documents I needed for the dog to be able to cross the Channel). We talk for over an hour – in English, mostly, which she says she wants to practice, because she has lived in Canada – Sweden (ballet school) – Copenhagen – Germany. She has a younger sister my age, and comes from a family of musicians. She’s going to a town outside of Paris with her theatre company: they have a production of a spinoff of ‘The Red Shoes’ tonight. We talk about travelling, families, writing, heartbreak. We cover a lot of topics in an hour. She knows what it’s like to have the fear of sharing your work: she sang her own songs to her first live audience last week. It is a friendship formed of fear, on my part, and of the solidarity of the lone female traveller. Cressida and Celeste. Pretty ‘C’ names for blonde haired girls. She holds Gabriel (who doesn’t howl (good judgement of character)) while I go to the loo, and she texts me later before I get home to make sure I’m alright. We agree to meet up again, at some unknown time in the unknown future we have been discussing. I know that we will.

My phone stopped working, so I drove from the station in Calais to the LeShuttle terminal without a map, just off my own vague memories of doing it in reverse 6 weeks ago. I remembered to drive on the right. I was a homing pigeon. A homing pigeon who didn’t much want to go home.

It is so nice to see the stars. I only saw them once, in Paris. Here, they sparkle. They really wink. So much showed that I thought a plane was a shooting star. I must have lived in my unreality too long. Home.