World capital of style · 2002-12-12
Salut tout le monde.
Is it as miserable there as it is here? Paris is a great place, but the sun just never shines here.
It’s been a couple of months since I left so it seems about time to send an extended account of what I’ve been up to. But narratives are boring, and the things I really want to tell you about are kind of abstract (as you might have expected), so the account is going to be brief:
L’HISTOIRE JUSQU’AU PRESENT: I’m living in a little loft studio in St Germain (opposite le Bon Marche if anyone knows). I passed the TEFL course a couple of weeks ago and now I’m considering what to do next and generally living a life of idleness – alas not decadence, as the money’s not there. I’ve been hanging out with assorted foreigners, in particular some Swedish girls (believe it or not), and occasionally trying to get better acquainted with French by tackling Le Monde or reading the French subtitles on American movies.
That’s about it! I have some pics I could show you but I can’t get the technology to work so for the moment they’re stuck in my digicam. Paris is incredible though, and I’ve decided that I am definitely going to become a French citizen at the first opportunity. If you want to know why, read on!
A plus tard
Rollo
The main challenges for living in Paris are:
SPEAKING FRENCH: I thought I could do this. I can do this – but for some reason it comes out so much better when (a) practising with oneself, or (b) drunk. Another problem is that Parisians speak much better English than most French people. This should never have been allowed to happen.
GOING OUT: You need a bank loan to go out in this city. A couple of weeks ago I went to Queen on Champs-Elysees, possibly the most pretentious club in western Europe. It certainly has the rudest bouncers. If your fashion choices are deemed acceptable then your 20 euro note will be snatched away with a sneer – and you better have some more handy if you want a drink, because prices start at 10 bucks, for a bottle of water.
But these are small issues. I would still trade my nationality in an instant. Why?
SOPHISTICATION: This is a country where a president once described religion as “a collection of absurdities”. It’s a nation of unselfconscious intellectuals. For instance, there are tons of cinemas here. People go all the time, and just about every film you can think of will be showing somewhere in town. Some cinemas hold debates at the end of the film. Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” has recently been on general re-release, and for weeks there have been queues in the street to see it. This for a film made in 1940, in a foreign language. French newspapers? Everyone knows how serious these are. In Paris the free morning rag (equivalent to Metro) reads a bit like the Guardian. On page six the other day there was an article inviting readers to a conference on the theme “La Rue? Parlons-en” (“The Street: Let’s talk about it”), to feature “sociologists, philosophers, historians…” You get the picture. Admittedly all this earnestness can get tiresome, and there’s definitely nothing to match Le Monde’s comment section as bedtime reading for insomniacs. I guess hot air just feels like fresh air. Besides, some of you know about my weakness for lah-di-dah armchair theorising.
CONFIDENCE: Sometimes I wonder where this comes from, considering that France is a faded imperial nation just like Britain – except that France also needed rescuing in two world wars and then lost the language battle too. It must just be Gallic arrogance. Looking around in Paris you get the impression that the country is showing off. The Louvre pyramids; the Arche de la Defense (great big office block with a hole in the middle); and now Mitterrand’s National Library, which could be described as four brutal glass monoliths standing four-square over a giant hole with a forest in it – the fact that it is meant to be a library is beside the point. But everything gleams impressively and works efficiently and the locals just do not care about the tax bill.
STYLE: France is without doubt the world capital of style. What are the alternatives? Italy? You forget the Italian penchant for Catholic kitsch. Sweden? Okay, the Swedes look good, but is style in their blood? – they’re related to Germans, after all. The French just have to win. Consider the old Metro entrances, sculpted outrageously like living organisms. Consider the TGV, with its Star-Trek doors and go-faster stripes. Consider the new Renault Avantime – you can’t, because it’s too stylish ever to sell in Britain. And just look at the people. It’s completely true that if you let your guard down for 3/8 second in Paris you’re liable to get run down by a speeding Twingo driven by a dapperly attired student talking on his mobile. And that’s on a pedestrian crossing. This would never happen in Blighty. Because the British dress like Jeremy Clarkson and drive like Postman Pat.
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