So here we are despising the tourists in Paris

Or should I rephrase to sound less grumpy? So here we are explaining to the tourists in Paris the fucking rules of "vivre ensemble" so that the locals don't despise them so much. That sounds a little long to me.

So, as they say here, pourquoi tant de haine? Poor tourists, visiting one of the most beautiful cities in the world, generally with cheerful good humour and injecting billions into the local economy, what have they done to merit such snootiness and disdain? I'd love to say that "it's not them tourists, it's us Parisians." It's partly true, due to the mentality and character of your basic Parisian. Read here for my analysis of this. But this is not the subject today.

To understand why Parisians get so annoyed with all things tourist it's important to understand how the city works. Paris is an incredibly dense city, with around 2,1 million inhabitants living in just over 100 sq. km²; that makes it nearly 21000 people per sq. km², and the 33rd densest city in the world, and four of its closest suburbs are in the top 20. (Thanks wikipedia). And that's just the people living there. As you can imagine millions more commute in and out of it every day for work. Like any ant nest, with all this to-ing and fro-ing, a certain amount of rigourous organisation is required and like a perfect Swiss watch, the force of things has made every individual move and routine interlinked.

Allow me to illustrate.

I start work at 9 o'clock in the 17th. This means I must leave the 10th at 8.15 to be comfortable and 8.21 if I'm pushing it. Anything after and I'm late. At 8.21 there will be a metro that takes me to Arts & Metiers station. The front of the train will be packed due to all the people getting off at République, the back relatively empty. 

At Arts & Metiers I will see some regulars: the old man with a potato nose, the young smooth guy with a briefcase, a orthodox jew dad with his two kids and a few others. On the westward train, I know that the back of the train will be packed, but a lot of people get out at the next stop where they start work at 8.30. You almost always get a seat then.

At St Lazare, where the platform is packed and passengers risk falling on the rails, two-thirds get off and then everybody crams in. They work at Levallois at the end of the line (the 13th densest city in the world btw, and top in Europe) and start at 9 - 9.15.

When I get out and walk the rest to work it's five to nine and parents are running with pushchairs, a little late, to get their kids to the nearby school. It's all incredibly predictable, and one immediately knows when it's the school holidays, or a long bank holiday, or if there is something amazing happening like the Tour de France, because the pace and the routine change ever so slightly. And so it continues for every journey, every day, in public transport or on foot or in shops.

It's also how everything ticks along, because there is a place for everyone at a certain time and a certain place. And somehow, Parisians instinctively know all of this. For commuting, for going out, for relaxing, for eating.

And there are basic rules to apply to avoid clogging the smooth flow of people. Everything is geared for maximum efficiency.

The first is DO NOT IDLE ALONG IN THE STREET, taking up all the room on the pavement, ambling as if this were a beach or something. "Hellloooooo? I do not have time to crawl behind you; I need to grab a sandwich and be back at the office in 20 minutes." 

Second, the same as above in the metro, DO NOT STAND AND GAWP GORMLESSLY IN THE METRO. It's not difficult to buy a ticket, and even if it is, you don't have to stand there consulting a map in the middle of a busy subterranean intersection.

RESPECT THE RULES OF THE METRO.
These are simple: you let people get out before you get in. To do that you stand on the platform on one side of the door. When the last person is off you may charge in.
You do not sit on the folding seats if it is packed.
If you have bulky pushchairs, suitcases and so on, you push your way to the back, away from the door so you don't prevent flow of people getting on and off. 
If you are next to the door and a lot of people want to get off, YOU get off, pushing your way into the front of the queue which has formed on the platform by the side of the door.
In the metro mothers with huge pushchairs are usually quickly and efficiently helped up or down the stairs without a break in anyone's stride.

 DO NOT ACT LIKE SHOPS ARE MUSEUM GIFT SHOPS. If you want cheese, buy it, don't stand there taking pictures of them all admiring their mould. If you don't know what to buy, ask the fromager in passable french for what you want, then take the ticket, go to the cash desk and pay. It should take between 20 seconds if you know what you want, and 4 minutes if you don't.

On ESCALATORS STAND ON THE RIGHT AND WALK ON THE LEFT. This applies to everyone, with or without luggage, pushchair, obese, etc.

With these rules, Paris never stops (none of this applies to traffic of course, you'd be mad to drive), people are constantly moving, generally pushing to go a little bit faster.

Tourists appear like clots at Christmas, Easter, late spring, then all of July and August in their masses. Suddenly the population seems to be wearing trainers and carrying maps, shouting on café terraces with huge shopping bags at their feet. They break the flow of the waiters and the shop assistants, the flow of the streets and the metro. They take pictures of the metro and stand in the middle of the street, or ride bicycles on the pavement.

One must also remember, in the poor Parisian's defense, that we would also like to hang out in Montmartre in the summer, or on the Champs de Mars, or in the Tuileries, because it's been a long winter and we really don't have that many green places to hang out in.

I was in the Tuileries, which runs from the Louvre to the place de la Concorde, last wednesday as the weather was good. Actually the sun was shining for the fist time in about 3 months and armed with book and water I went to find a chair and a spot. All the chairs were taken and, I regret to say that this is the absolute truth, taken by families of tourists who were using them as picnic tables or lying with their feet on them or just for resting their bags. "Yo guys! There's potentially 21000 of us needing a chair here! WTF!"

I asked for one and got it, brushed of the crumbs and crap and went for a quiet read in the sun. An incredible-looking Parisienne, in her late 60s, obtained a chair nearby and took out her magazines. She had short, perfectly bouffant red hair, and full make up: foundation, blue eyeshadow, red lipstick and nails like Rihanna, square and about 4 cms long. She had a coral crocodile handbag, 10cm beige stilettos and a pink silk shirt, with a matching carré Hermès tied around her neck. She sat there in the sun, I was amazed she didn't melt.

Nearby was a typical Parisian water fountain, the type you find in all the parks. Short, green, with a metal handle you turn to get the water flowing. Great fun for kids of course. So when a Spanish (?) family started to have a water fight a few meters from us, laughing and shouting and then picnicing loudly nearby, old Parisienne turned around and gave them a severe reprimand in pretty good english. She told me she lived Avenue MacMahon, right next to the Champs Elysées and Arc de Triomphe and she couldn't wait to leave Paris for the summer. It seems a bit mean I agree, but it sure was nice to be able to lie back in the sun and snooze a bit. None of us has a garden, a small terrace at best.

So dear tourists, it's not that the Parisians hate you per se, it's just that they think you take up so much room in an already tiny city, and when you block the streets by day and bellow in the streets by night, it's actually right on their way and under their windows. Paris looks like a museum but loads of people live here, and they don't like to have to queue at local shops or get stuck behind you in the metro. So if there can't be fewer of you, maybe you could be a bit less loud, or walk a bit faster, or stand up in the metro if it's packed. And stop asking the waiter for the bill, he'll bring it when it's ready.

So here we are telling the truth II

2) Single neurone syndrome (SNS), or unique brain cell condition (UBCC)

Known more popularly as "where the fuck am I and why am I here?". This was something I was totally unaware of about pregnancy: your brain actually shrivels and doesn't work. In my case, it has gone down to the size of a largish walnut, and can do about as much. Not very practical on a day to day basis. So you go down to the shops to get something you desperately need and stare glumly at the shelves. Or you're talking to somebody and mid-sentence you suddenly have no idea why or where this was going ("Ah yes, the kitchen is on fire"). Or you stare sadly at the person behind the desk who has just asked for your phone number, or the name of your doctor, or yours for that matter. Filling in forms takes ages, which is a shame as the paperwork required to fill in when you're expecting a baby is endless. Having meaningful conversations is just too exhausting: you have to take notes. So, you get the idea. One's brain is like the end result of a chronic drug abuser's meeting an Alzheimer-riddled one on a hangover. Only slightly less sharp. This is also why the sentences I write on this blog are getting ever shorter. It's just too confusing to play with syntax.

3) Constant peeing

does not start when you have a huge belly/baby pressing down on your bladder. It starts when you have a minuscule bump and tiny baby pressing down on your bladder. The annoying thing is that even though you need to go every HOUR or so, you don't actually have much to evacuate. So now we are like a hungover Alzheimer suffering chronic drug abuser with a prostate problem.

4) Exhaustion

Not a word to be taken lightly. The lack of 8 shots of espresso a day doesn't help, but there are clearly other maleficient forces at play. It's not about being a little dozy or feeling tired cos it's been a long week. It's waking up in the morning, going to work, and realising as you get there at 9 AM that you feel like you've already done a full and difficult day. It's eating lunch and realising that it's bedtime because your body has just retired for the day. It's sitting down to watch the news and waking up 3 hours later. Movements and speech slow down, instinctive reflexes disappear. Yawning becomes rampant. Again, so practical when your job is based on teaching people 6 hours a day. Doing simple things like going up and down stairs, carrying a bit of shopping, commuting and remembering the day of the week (SNS!) triggers the need to crawl around in a circle and settle down for the night. Still, it's pretty good to have an excuse to sleep about 11 hours a day as there probably won't be a lot of that in a few months. maybe i'll look back on this in 6 months or so and laugh bitterly, as the true definition of exhaustion willhave hit me in a whirl of night feeds and nappies. I'll keep you posted... 

So here we are telling the truth

Of course every women is different. That's the only thing all these different women can agree on. And this of course applies to pregnancy so, reader, be aware that within these pages you shall find only my experiences, no more no less. if you are expecting I can only hope that this is alien to you. If not, then you've been warned...

Also, this is written in no particular order (except maybe the most horrible painful spring to mind first).

1) Morning sickness.

Bullshit. Morning? Unless morning lasts 6 weeks and counting I'm not sure I get. So at first you feel fine. In fact you feel exactly the same as usual: you fancy nicotine and alcohol and coffee and food, preferably consumed together. Then one day you look at some pleasant ravioli in the fridge and hurl. Appetite disappears. Every smell (which is magnified to its millionth power) pulls on some long fragile cable that suspends the stomach and makes the guts wobble. The mildewy smell under the sink, the fresh paint, the cigarette smoke, the shower gel, the grilled sausages, candle wax, cooked spinach... everything sets off drool and retching.

Morning sickness set in around week 6, that's about 4 weeks after conception (just because). Chicken nuggets started it off. I really felt like some (I usually won't touch them) so microwaved some frozen at work. Big mistake. After that I could just about chew anything very bland but not swallow. The thought of anything made me feel horrible and perversely, the less you eat, the more the juices flow and the shittier you feel. The doctor, a.k.a Hitler, suggested 6 to 8 small meals a day, which apart from being physically impossible was not pratical. i spend around 6 hours a day in the company of students, teaching them English in a small training room or in their office. Not the right time to start making and eating ham sandwiches and washing apples.

The worst experience came on May 23rd, in a fashionable new restaurant in the 9th. Light, fresh, 3 course menu with wonderful ingredients and a real twist on classics. Cold fennel soup with vanilla and grilled almonds, tranluscent cod on a bed of bright green parsley puree. YUCK!! never has anything been so fragrant and creamy and sweet and green. I can't even remember dessert, I think I spent all evening in the loo.

One day things get better. you wake up  without a cannon ball on your chest. Immediate panic of course because you think you've lost the baby, but no fear, the nausea does come back, in unexpected waves and at odd times, in the night, or in the metro, in the middle of a pronunciation exercise or in the middle of (a light) lunch.

The worst occured of course while teaching. I have many students, though I see most for only a week when they come for an intensive 42-hour course at the school. Others I have scattered in companies and extensive lessons, and I see them every fortnight or so in their office or at the school. General H. is one of the latter. A consultant for France's major defense company, he is a retired general and has seen a lot of battle, negociated extremely tricky situations and is basically a living history book ("War : 1970-2012"). He is also a pleasant, fluffy and dignified old chap, friendly and clearly rather conservative. I was feeling ok and was confident that my lesson would go well with Uncle H. We were at the annex, a small office a few streets away from the main school. It's in an old parisian building, and it has rooms leading off a very long and winding corridor; We were as far away from the loo as possible. Mid-lesson I felt the familiar symptoms (rising drool, need to sneeze, stomach churning battery acid) and excused myself, running down the endless corridor. Into the tiny loo and found relief, not with a gentle plop you understand but with a coughing, hacking, burping opera of empty stomach and hormones. Eventually I got up, red, tears streaming down my face and realised that the tiny window was open and that the concert had been echoing around the silent courtyard, straight into my classroom. When I got back, I understood that he thought I was drunk of  hungover, so I told him the truth and he was delighted for me. That's the plus side. It's horrible but everyone is very nice.

Today I feel fine in the mornings but feel very sick in the afternoons, whether I eat, lightly, or not. There are good days and bad, and the saying that the sickness disappears at 12 weeks is certainly not applicable in my case. Things are better and I can face food. But not all of them all the time, and not sometimes not at all. To be fair, sometimes i can also eat like a monster.

So, at 14 weeks pregnant, i'm hoping that things will have settled before long. it wold be nice to gorge this summer after all.

        

So here we are making it official

Gorgeous Chook and I are expecting a baby! or whatever the combination of our gene pools can muster. So far so good. I'm around three and a half months pregnant and apart from an extremely drunken family wedding and boozy holiday in the UK I've been pretty good (define good). Scans, blood tests and the rest indicate all's normal. So! the baby is due around mid January 2013.

That's the nice part. Now let's talk about uncontrollable farting, shall we? 

So here we are fighting in the Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

In a nutshell: in a post apocalyptic world where 12 districts are ruled under the Capitol's iron fist, Katniss Everdeen, our pubescent rebel, is selected for the Hunger Games where you either kill or are killed, for the amusement of all those watching on live TV.


The blurb: the theme sounds familiar because it is, maybe inspired by the cross-fertilisation of Battle Royale and Lord of the Flies. It is the potentially not-too-distant future and the world has been re-organised. Each of the twelve districts must select 2 teenagers who will be sent like modern gladiators to the Arena, a vast territory where the outcome is either glory or death. One doesn't get a glimpse of the Arena till well into the book, the first half of it dealing with the complex life and personnality of our heroin who struggles to help her family survive and her subsequent grooming as one of the selected. In fact much more of the book is dedicated to the setting of the harsh new world, the description of the characters and their complex relationships than to actual fighting. The themes of totalitarianism, love, duty, friendship and betrayal are much more present here than blind violence. Though the book can be read alone, it is clearly the foundation of what turned out to be a trilogy.  

IMHO this was a lot better than I thought it would be. Panem is an interesting and unusual world and Katniss and her acolytes have rich and developed personalities that twist the storyline in unexpected ways. Though there is nothing new with the concept of the actual Hunger Games ( Battle Royale), the way they are portrayed here touch on the themes of reality TV, modern sponsorship and political repression. A pretty damn good holiday read all in all.

So here we are electioneering with Joan of Arc

Happy new year! And welcome to the official opening of the French presidential campaign 2012. Indeed, since the first of January, all announced candidates have been under scrutiny, and will be until round one on April 22nd; all their TV and radio appearances are now timed to guarantee perfect media-time equality. This is straightforward enough when announced candidates such as François Hollande (Parti Socialiste, credited as being next president if one takes any notice of the polls), Hervé Morin (Nouveau Centre, 0 to 1% depending on the day), François Bayrou (Modem, centrist, 7%) and others speak into the mike: their time is counted and the idea is that everyone will have spoken the same by the eve of the first round.

It gets a little more tricky whern it comes to counting the speech time of the unofficial candidates, the biggest of these being the current president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy has yet to announce his running for election (though there is a 98% chance he will stand) and, as the President has a certain number of speeches, conferences and visits in his diary, it is turning out to be a nightmare deciding when Nicolas "the Prez" Sarkozy is talking as opposed to Nicolas "the candidate" Sarkozy is. To be fair, this is nothing new under the sun. All former French Presidents have waited until the last possible moment before declaring their second candidacy. Valery Giscard d'Estaing in '81 waited until March (and lost), Mitterand in '88 waited until March (and won), and Chirac in 2002 waited about the same (and won). The notable difference between these guys and Sarko is the latter gives a conference every couple of days.

The CSA, the French audiovisual watchdog that cares about such matters, has decided to analyse every word of every presidential intervention; when he talks about the need to pull together in a crisis it'll be considered legitimate President-talk; when he slams into the opposition talking about their insane fiscal policies it'll be docked off his speaking time.

But of course it's a fine line as was recently illustrated by the Joan of Arc episode. Joan of Arc, French national heroin, martyr saint and semi mythological peasant maid who is meant, aged 14 to have kicked the English out of France under God's guidance, was born 600 years ago (we think).

An important figure in French national consciousness, she has been for decades the possession of the far-right Front national who seen in her the young, guided and original French resistant, who was burned at the stake for heresy no less. Staunch National front supporters actually gather around Joan's gold statue next to the Louvre every first of may to celebrate the dedication and sacrifice of the "pucelle d'Orléans." So when her rather approximate 600th birthday came round Sarkozy decided to celebrate the event in Vaucouleurs, from where she launched her military campaign that eventually led her to Orléans and the coronation of Charles VII, over half a millenium ago...

Sarkozy is communications genius, and his use of symbols was already omnipresent in his 2007 campaign. In 2007, he accumulated refernces to the right, with the great Charles de Gaulle, resistant who saved France from the nazis and went on to become the founder of the Vth Republic, or Jean Moulin and André Malraux, major figures of the Resistance. More interestingly, he also appropriated a lot of left-wing figures, as early as January 2007 he was raving on about Jaurès and a little later Guy Moquet, the communist youth who was shot for resiting the Nazis (see post here).

Now that it's 2012, he needs to innovate and find some new unifying figures. Napoleon would be an idea but of course for Sarkozy such a choice is impossible. Since day one he has been accused of strutting around with the same megalomaniac ambitions as his fellow shorty "hyperpresident", and is often nicknamed Sarko Ier in the satirical publications. Impossible equally for Louis XIV, who as well as centralising France around Paris and modernising the country a great deal was also an egomaniac who called himswelf the Sun King.

So Sarkozy has gone into French mythology and craftily nicked, with excellent timing, the Jeanne d'Arc figure from the extreme right. A misunderstood character who ultimately led France out of the Dark Ages and the Hundred years War to independence, peace and prosperity. Remind you of anyone? And of course because this was a national hommage to a French heroin, it was the president who was doing all the work, not the candidate so the CSA can't charge him for this. What other mythological character associations can we get from Sarkozy before he declares his candidacy?

So here we are falling with giants

Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

In a nutshell: as always with Ken Follett in a nutshell is complicated as this volume, the first in a triolgy spanning the main events of the 20th century, is 850 pages long. Here goes. We start in 1911 in a small Welsh mining town. We meet several characters, Billy, teenage miner and his beautiful sister Ethel who works at the local rich man's house. We meet Fitz, the local rich man, and his Russian homesick wife. All these people and many moreare the center of a huge web of lives that span from the outbreak of the first world war, the Russian revolution and America's intervention in the war.

The blurb: Ken Follett is reproducing exactly the same tricks as with his previous books, Pillars of the Earth (read review here) and World without End (read review here). The idea is that we follow a cast of dozens, who are all more or less related, sometimes in the most improbable ways. The backdrop is a page turning 8-year chronology of the bloody trenches in northern France to the fragile start of the Soviet Union. We follow characters in the States and get a flavour of immigrant New York as America's politicians prepare for war. Miners, soldiers, diplomats, spies, princesses, revolutionnaries, suffragettes, politicians, criminals, everyone is represented and weaves together the history of that time.

Sometimes though the links between the people are bizarre: the sister of the young miner we meet in Wales at the beginning is the mother of the bastard child of Fitz whose wife is a Russian princess who murdered the mother of Grigori who becomes Lenin's close colleague and Lev who goes to New York but lands in Wales in the very same mining town where Maud the sister of the Earl is having an affair with the German spy who... and so on. It actually gets a bit confusing, and there is a lot of blood, battle and fighting in the second part of the book whereas the first was more focused on the characters.

IMHO this started to get a bit long and boring about three quarters in. There are a lot of people and plots and thought it is interesting to see the bigger picture develop, we start to lose track of reality as we swap from Russian revolution to New York underworld to suffragette London and and Westminster war councils. Good for people who like big complex war sagas written in a one big breath.