A Chance Encounter in Rainy Paris | EUROtoday

Stephen’s aged (and crude) companion laments the muddy situations in Paris…

Standing outdoors a café the opposite day, I bought speaking to an previous chap who lives in my neighborhood right here within the north of Paris. He has an condo in one of many large tower blocks that had been constructed within the Nineteen Eighties, apparently throughout a interval when town council forgot that architects existed. Brutalism is fashionable now, however these buildings by no means shall be. They have all of the grace of a roasting potato.

The previous chap instructed me that for that reason, his constructing has been en travail (having work carried out) for the previous decade or so. Substandard supplies are being changed and ‘enticing’ cladding added, with staff gazing in by way of his home windows from every new outbreak of scaffolding. The previous chap lives on the twenty eighth flooring and will take pleasure in a beautiful view of Montmartre and the Eiffel Tower – if solely his condo had been on the facet that faces the vacationers’ dream. But he seems to be out in the direction of the ring street, a clutch of railway strains and a horizon of suburban sprawl.

MUDDY UNDERFOOT

When he instructed me all this, he wasn’t actually complaining. Something else was bothering him. Something extra seasonal. “My whole street has turned into the Somme,” he stated.

I puzzled for a second whether or not trench warfare had damaged out. Or had he seen the ghosts of Henry V’s archers on their technique to Agincourt? He defined that the pavement and street had been dug up as a part of a plan to plant shrubs and create a cycle lane. Most of Paris is present process this metamorphosis in the meanwhile, however rain had turned the previous chap’s morning stroll to the Sunday market right into a trek throughout a battlefield.

He confirmed me his sneakers, abnormal leather-based slip-ons, which had been crusted with mud. Unlike the Somme’s clays, although, this was gentle in colour, presumably due to the sand that Paris makes use of as a basis for its paving stones.

Not to be outdone, I lifted a foot to indicate my costly blue coaching shoe spattered with white. The earlier day I had been to the Orangerie within the Tuileries, to remind myself of its wonderful everlasting assortment of early Twentieth-century Parisian artwork (Modigliani, Utrillo, Soutine et al). And after rain, the pathways within the Tuileries at all times flip right into a kind of mixing bowl for cement. No surprise Louis XIV moved out to Versailles. The previous chap nodded. “Every November, when they give us our flu vaccinations,” he stated, “they should also distribute rubber boots. It’s the only way to walk around Paris in the winter and early spring.” I did not wish to play the ecology card and counsel that one pair of trainers per lifetime can be sufficient. We Parisians solely get muddy ft if we stroll in parks after rain or throughout constructing websites.

A TRIP TO MARKET

“Still, mud can come in useful,” the previous chap stated. He pointed to his buying baggage that had been overflowing with seasonal greens – leeks, celery, a bunch of small contemporary beetroot, a tray of mushrooms. Our native market sells unique imports like avocados and pineapples, however all winter it’s jammed with seasonal produce, lots of it grown within the countryside round Paris.

In lately of disappearing seasons, our market, just like the mud, is at all times a reminder of the place we’re within the calendar. “Do you go to the mushroom stall?” the previous chap requested me. “No, the queue is always too long, and he sells out so fast,” I confessed. He laughed. “Yes, I always get there before nine. And I always make the same joke. I tell him, you’re lucky, your queue gets longer every week.” This was an obscene pun. As properly as a line, queue in French means a male member. I laughed politely. In French, puns like that aren’t seasonal, they’re perennial. That poor mushroom vendor should know precisely the place he’s each Sunday morning.

Stephen Clarke’s newest e-book, Charles Frederick Worth, the Englishman who invented Parisian Haute Couture, is concerning the Nineteenth-century Brit behind the style trade.

From France Today Magazine

Lead photograph credit score: Photo: Shutterstock