I Caved In.

Succumbed, gave up, crumbled. I bought something from the British Aisle in the shop after 9 months of managing to not buy Worcester sauce and Dairy Milk for a fiver. And what broke me? Ginger Nuts. They are so good though!

Then because he slipped up and said it was the English food bit, I gave a lesson on flags, The United Kingdom versus Great Britain, Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland, etc, to the four year old. He will be the best educated French person I know when I'm done, except on the Welsh flag, which I shamefully don't know how to draw. Even after so much Gavin and Stacey.

Fruitcake.

I just had a 45 minute walk with the potential (but not really) new au pair.

'Not really', because I already knew she wasn't getting the job, and it turns out she doesn't want it anyway. Their reasons for not wanting her: she's too nice for our kids, she told us our books were bad, she's very big on God and morals and stuff. Her reasons: she frowns upon reading in English at bedtime and would "have to change that" -going for candles and one of her stories instead, the general not-listening attitude of the boys (I can't tell a lie, I told her they never listen) but mainly she talked about ironing.

Ironing. She doesn't want to lower her standards of living to what they would be in mon petit studio, and she got quite emphatic at this point- Let me first say that you look very nice, I don't mean that you don't look very nice, but me I cannot live somewhere I cannot iron, and where would I put my clothes? (At least the clothes rail is accessible love- try Amy's climb-on-the-desk-to-reach-it cupboard, now sadly empty.) I told her I just hang them up after the wash and that I've gone for a 'non-iron chic' look for my year in Paris, but it isn't for her, apparently. And when I mentioned it was baltic all winter well that was it, she can't do it, she'd get sick. She has a point here, I have been ill in this flat a lot. But mainly what came across from our awkward chat? Fruitcake. (As in she is a.) She carried around a little Tupperware box with cold toast and lemon curd. Yes I had one, but I was really hungry.

I forgot to mention, this au pair is a 50 year old woman rather than your bog standard early twenties girl like the rest of us, which surely begs the question WHY are you applying for this job? You can do better!!! Surely.

Living the dream?

Just walked home right across the front of Notre Dame at 2am. Could have been in a film.
Actually walked through a film set last weekend, just down from the steps where magic happens at midnight in the new Woody Allen one- how I wanted Hemmingway to come and pick me up in a carriage. Just to add to an already surreal night.

(I only went out to use the wifi at Wos, and ended up crashing a birthday party with someone I'd just met through chatting to her grandad who tried to set me up with his grandson, a star American football player.)

But then maybe that's all it is- just pictures.
'Picture' living in Paris, New York, London... you'd think of striking scenes, with streetlamps, rivers, iconic public transport and famous monuments, and anything that happens against the backdrop automatically looks good; romantic, melancholy, dramatic, beautiful, whatever. And it feels it too, thinking you're in a film all day and night long can get to your head. I wear headscarves much more freely than I did at home.
Life imitates chic Parisen movies.
If you filmed anyone's life in the right lighting it could be worth watching, so filming mine right now would make people jealous, if you left out the terrible work parts. It's funny how you adjust. It'd make me jealous if I wasn't living it. That's strange, because I'm leaving it.

Climbing my 71 steps this came to me in a much more eloquent way than it's coming out now, by the way.

I haven't done my list of best places in Paris recently, but it's basically been decided.

Les Parigots for tea, amazing burgers.
Le Comptoir Generale for drinks in the coolest place. Alternative wedding venue.
Favela Chic for dancing on benches.
Wos Bar for the staff and general fun.
Le Relais Gascon for giant salads with lots of meat and potatoes.
Le Mosquee for mint tea, it fixes everything.
Marlusse et Lapin for drinks in a bedroom and to see them serve absinthe properly.

I'll add that the the first 3 are also the places I've seen the most gorgeous men of my life, mostly working behind the bars. Just so you know where to go.

I don't think you've seen this one yet:

Up

I've been having Nice Days Out again,

which seems to be the running theme of this blog, apart from the ranting.

Mornings have been improved by the discovery that a mini Evian bottle (purchased in a 'menu' at macdos- healthy, see) is made of stronger stuff that your regular plastic bottle, and can in fact hold the steaming hot contents of my percolator. Thus saving money on takeaway coffees and consequently being able to have two croissants for breakfast by the Seine: nice thing no.1.

I've also noticed that I'm quite talented at running into sports events quite by accident. Nice thing no.2.

Silly pic of me and my teacup of wine.

One weekend, which I'm surprised I've not written about yet because it was fab- actually just remembered, it's because I gave myself a horrendous hangover and couldn't face the computer screen for days- anyway that weekend we went to a free music festival at Parc de la Villette, which is very cool and has floaty bridges over a wee canal in it.

Caribou were playing and we drank wine from teacups and ate a picnic and had a lot of fun, a nice big group of us.
At the end of the afternoon everyone else sort of branched off for home so me and Laura thought; firstly- food- and purchased a greasy merguezy kebaby thing and ate it on the side of a fountain, discussing the extensive French use of the word 'pique', for spicy, hot, stingy, itchy, cold, sour....

The second thought was to go home and wash the grease off out faces, hands and clothes, being messy eaters. So off we pop on the metro where we are picked on by a man for no other reason than our speaking English and being girls, so off we jump asap- a stroke of genius if I say so myself- at Jaures and go to Point Ephemere where lo and behold the something-or-other final was on, Barcelona versus Manchester United, showing on a big screen with lots of boys watching. So we stayed and watched and had another wine, it was lovely (not creepy).

By now it's quite late and we still need to wash our faces, so back on the metro and on a whim, we say why not head up to Wos bar after a quick stop at mine, it's close, it's cheap, we love it. We're quite up for a dance.
It was a brilliant idea as we knew it would be, and we had a lot of fun. We also had a lot of free drinks, and not enough water. I blame the barman. Laura hugged me over-enthusiatically outside, I was in my high heels:  she has bruises.

I've gone off on a tangent. Will continue when I remember what my point was. Ah yes, with more sporting events...

Across the Universe

I have just watched this film, have you seen it? I'd suggest you do, if you're a fan of good musical films.
From the moment Jim Sturgess turns around and starts singing 'Girl', I'm absolutely in love. Oh my goodness he is amazing. And I love that song.

Twas a good day, even though our extremely early start was thwarted by trains not running as they should. After breakfasting at Opera on croissants and home-brewed coffee transported in a plastic bottle and drunk out of plastic teacups, we got the train to Vernon and then a bus up to Giverny, where Claude Monet lived and worked, all the waterlilies and that.
Unfortunately, being optimists, we expected hot and we expected sunshine. We had taken heed of the stormy weather forecasts only by taking an umbrella and wearing a cardi with a hood. These came in useful (the red umbrella contrasted brilliantly with the weeping willows) but weren't really adequate for the downpour of the afternoon, neither were the sandals which went all slimy and made me squirm and giggle. It tickled, but in a horrible way.

The gardens were beautiful, no wonder he painted so much. And the house is painted in such pretty colours, and nice tiles everywhere. I WILL live in a house like that, one day... We took a lot of photos, hogging the bridge for a good 5 minutes, so long people started heckling. Actually my day started with being heckled in the train station purely for being blond. At least that was the only word I understood. Oh Paris men, why can't you just be normal, more like Jude...

...I'm away to re-watch that film.

Evil creepy frenzy

I'll miss the boys when I leave, and I'll miss Paris, it really is beautiful, and lovely, and full of lovely things-

Eeughhh, I have just discovered I can't say the word lovely anymore after watching Hitchcock's Frenzy last night. Anyone who's watched it will know why, anyone who wants to know should watch it, but be warned: it involves one of the most creepy scenes I've ever seen. It was a really good film, with some fairly graphic murders, and a naked corpse falling out the back of a potato truck onto a road, narrowly escaping being run over by a following police car.

Also I kept getting distracted by having to identify all the old cars correctly, Spitfires, Dolomites, Heralds, Stags, etc. (Fellow Uptons will empathise, I actually made my friend stop and look into a dusty old Triumph the other day, oohing at it, I think she thought I was mental. But it's the first one I've seen in Paris!) We're coming to the end of our Hitchcock collection, and a sad thing it is too. It has been an education.

What I was going to say before getting flashbacks to the 'lovely' scene (ugh) was that I will not miss being an au pair/nanny/nounou. Even the little one has a blooming evil streak when he wants to. I was trying to hurry him down the stairs to get back to school on time after lunch, so went down ahead of him and called up a few times,
-hurry up please, you can tell me while we're walking, come on...
He shouted back in his most insolent and superior voice
YOU STOP TALKING. IF YOU KEEP TALKING I'M NOT GOING. YOU STOP TALKING. STOP TALKING NOW. YOU DONT TALK. IF YOU DON'T STOP TALKING I WON'T GOING.
I wasn't even saying anything, I was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. I went outside into the courtyard so I couldn't hear him.
He came outside giving me the blackest look- shockingly dark for such a cherubic looking boy, and continued to shout
IF YOU TALK I'M NOT GOING
-come on we're going to be late for school, listen, stop,
YOU STOP! NO WE WON'T BE LATE. YOU LISTEN TO ME
He storms back towards the stairs. I despair, stuck between wanting for him to calm down and stop being a hideous brat, and not wanting him to be late for school, but having no desire to have him continue to bully me all the way down the street in front of people.
-Don't speak to me like that, you are being very rude
NO YOU DON'T SPEAKING TO ME LIKE THAT YOU'RE RUDE YOUSTOPNOW!

There was more like that, then I got him to wheesht long enough to say
-but I'm an adult, you don't speak to other adults like that, would you speak to your teacher like that?
NO BUT I SPEAK TO YOU LIKE THAT
-No you certainly do not
YES I CAN. *accompanied by evil laser eyes*

I got him back to school, late, "c'est pas grave" teacher says. I must have looked how I felt.

Only an hour left before I have to pick them up again, hideous.
Happily, I have 4 days off starting at 8.30pm tonight- bring it on. Gotta love Bank Holidays!