As I couldn't get into my blog for an hour because of 'technical difficulties' I was wandering the web and have now discovered from the Oz site that Keller AND Cyril both die. How unnecessary is that? (Although there was the fascinating fact that Ryan and Cyril are actually brothers in real life.) I will obviously have to watch the whole series on my own - I hate to cry in front of my children.

I am writing some more about Paris although it isn't interesting but I may be glad of it later as, I have to admit, one of the reasons for going there was that my husband is looking for a flat. It is supposedly a family thing but he is the one who is there constantly on business and he is the one who is paying for it with some money he has inherited. We, apart from him, want to live on the Left Bank and he wants to live on the Right Bank within walking distance of the Gare du Nord and all the places he visits businessily. An impasse has set in but not really as when it comes down to it he has the last word. He has decided on the district near the Opera which is DREARY AND NOT FUN and I can already see myself on the top floor, (the inherited money isn't that much), of one of those blank houses watching French television alone and thinking about suicide.

This is not being whiny and 'Get a grip,woman', it is totally objective. I can see that the Left Bank is not what it was and is full of tourists and chain shops and restaurants selling rubbishy moules frites and steaks which aren't even horse any more. And that in spite of this it is also ludicrously expensive and we could probably only afford a 'studio flat' of supreme nastiness but I don't care. It is still full of memories and nostalgia for charming bohemians through the ages and literary allusions and the ghost of me at nineteen. And we walked over the river to have dinner there for half the nights last week and each time turned out amusing, well relatively. And in one restaurant my son actually met some boys from his old school who are now studying in Paris and they took him out drinking for two of the evenings which was perfect. The nights in restaurants on the Right Bank towards the Opera we met no one and no chance of it.

On one of the L.B. nights we went to the famous 'A.....r' where we were having a really expensive meal when my daughter found a live slug on her plate, (not huge). As we had been drinking heavily this seemed killingly amusing and she also has this incredibly friendly smile which makes everyone behave scarily nicely to her. As she had hardly started eating we had to call the waiter but couldn't stop doing stupid giggling and didn't make much of it. After a bit the manager appeared and did Japanese-style self-humiliation in a hushed voice and said she could have a free dessert. We were saying, also hushedly, no no think nothing of it, could have happened to anyone etc. When the bill came they had given us her entire meal free and all the desserts and coffee of the rest of us and the manager turned up again and said this was because we had been so nice and had not 'embarrassed' him. I'm sure this is not original but if you had a tiny jar on your person with a slug on a piece of lettuce, you could get a discount on many of your meals.
In fact someone did that in a film, didn't they?

Lettuce played a part again later; on our last day we had lunch again on the Left Bank and chose an 'authentic' looking bar which although not cheap was filled with French workmen. Everything was fine until we were walking 'home' and I suddenly felt a strong urge to lie down in the gutter and rest. We were in the middle of a quest for Daddy's Christmas present from my daughter which is an obscenely expensive box of gourmet chocolates filled with a range of gourmet cheeses. (Don't ask). Which can only be bought from one boutique chocolatier at the far end of infinity. As we were using my credit card I had to be there and did finally make it after collapsing into a bar which charged £6.00 for two cups of undrunk coffee and had a notice on the wall assuring their customers that all their beef came only from France and Belgium. (Don't get me started... but British beef is now the safest in the world after all the fuss and new regulations and the French are STILL refusing to buy it against all laws and sanity because it suits their farmers so well. Our revenge is that French beef is rife with BSE, I have this on first hand authority, but they just cover up the evidence all the time ..SO THEY WILL ALL DIE).

Anyway, our last evening was meant to be for me and I had chosen to fulfill a long-held wish and go to the Buddha Bar in smart but discreet French clothes with my glamorous children shielding me from anyone thinking I was frumpy or too old and drink idiotic cocktails and listen to the Buddha Bar music. But when we got back my daughter suddenly had the lying down in the gutter urge combined with various other symptoms and had to spend the evening in bed.
We had passed many meals of the holiday sniping at my son for his casual attitude towards vegetables but now the only thing that he hadn't eaten was the lunchtime salad, of which she had taken far the most, healthily. She had to be practically carried to the Eurostar and lay pathetically and pale grey across two seats, (from which I had flushed a rather ratty businessman who said, 'What, are you expecting me to STAND all the way back?'.) And that was it.







- posted by Iris @ 12/08/2003 12:08:00 AM comment