Paris rain stops play

After a warm day yesterday when temperatures reached 24' rain this morning has put pay to my plans for a vide-grenier. Looks like brunch at Cafe de l'Industrie near Bastille will have to do instead. Tough times.

The kings of no sense thinking - it's written in the constitution.

I work with French people every day and I try to be diplomatic, but often the French do your job for you and today a French man declared to me, “We are the kings of no sense thinking!” And so they are. The traffic lights for pedestrians turn green to red and back again and the lights which control road traffic work in the same way, timed so that red lights for traffic coincide with green lights for pedestrians and vice versa. This we all know, but the French apply their own bent logic, so that pedestrians and cars both cross on red as often as they do on green. Somehow the wrongness of one counterbalances the wrong of the other. Of course, sooner or later someone gets bounced off their feet by a bike, a motor cycle or a car, but as another Frenchman told me “We know we are breaking the rules, so it is ok for us when we get caught.” A French friend told me a story about how, when he was in Switzerland, he started to cross the road against the red light, but a Swiss woman caught his sleeve and sharply berated him for his irresponsibility, in demonstrating such a bad example to her child. “I’m sorry," he retorted "but I am French.” There is certainly a French idea that the liberté of their constitution can be called upon to justify jay walking, cycling without helmets, smoking in enclosed areas of bars and so on. If you drive a car, you know there will be pedestrians crossing at all times, so you keep an extra eye open. If you are a pedestrian, you don’t trust the green light to be safe, so always look to your left as you cross. Somehow in this fraternité of shared no sense thinking the égalité finds its own balance. Voila! Long live the king!

How to drink cheap wine and speak bad French.

I am not a wine snob. I simply can’t afford to be. In the UK my average wine purchase was no more than £3.49 for weekday bottles, rising to £4.99 at weekends and occasionally to £5.99 for a bottle for friends. I am aware of what a philistine this makes me, choosing wine by its price bracket, but twenty years ago I travelled through France for a few months and tasted some of the most exciting wine of my life. Bought from co-operative wine makers in small villages, I recall the vin de pays which rolled itself into a velvet wave on my tongue or frolicked like a muddy puppy in my throat. This was straightforward wine, drunk in the region of its birth from grape growers producing wine which can make a warrior of a timid man.

Imagine me here in a Paris supermarket, scanning the shelves for cheap wine, dreading the pinched noses and turned down mouths of my French friends, who disparage my taste in wine, as much as they disdain my attempts to speak their noble language. Ask a group of French people a point about grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation, and there will be huge disagreement between them: so it is with their opinions of wine. The first dispute stems from the way that they are reared and educated to revere the perfect stasis of their own language, but because there are so many rules, they simply can’t retain it all. The second dispute comes from their equally strong conviction that they know all there is to know about viniculture and palate. No two people in the whole of France actually taste wine in the same way. I do know however, that when I found a lovely wine for just over 3 euros ( a Côtes-de-Duras 2008 from Château les Roques, a 14% wine which was 60% Merlot and 40% Cabernet Sauvignon produced from 12 hectares sitting on a small plateau) all the bottles had disappeared by the time I went back two days later.

By choosing wines from the bottom (cheapest) shelf, but keeping to those from small producers, I have found some cheerful companions and haven’t had a wine headache since I came to Paris.

I drink my favourite wine first. ‘Keeping best to last’ just doesn’t bear up after the first few glasses and once ‘les amies’ have got onto their third bottle, they stop caring about my grammar and miraculously I speak much improved French.

Nature morte - still life and the love of a sticky toffee pudding.

A few weeks ago I visited La Bibliothèque Nationale to see an exhibition of early photography. Here’s a tip: you’re not allowed into the impossibly inspiring domed reading room without a reader’s ticket, but you can peek through the windows and if, as a voyeur like me, you get a thrill from sneaking unseen glances at people deep in thought through small high windows, architecture aside, you’ll find it worth the detour.

The labels next to the exhibits brought my attention to a French term which gives an insight into the French psyche. The photographs of fruit, grouped wine bottles, dead pike and such on a table, were all referred to as ‘nature morte’. These details of daily life (cut flowers, a cup just abandoned by the absentee user) are conceived as dead nature in French; the moment recorded is gone and withered, a romantic reminder that we are all heading in that same direction, whereas, ‘still life’ in English suggests a shared pause, a bridge between one moment in another time when the scene was recorded by the artist, and a moment taken now by the viewer to enter into the picture. For me this clear difference in the choice of description, is an indicator of the comparative pessimism and optimism of the French and English.

During my first year here in Paris I have witnessed displays of public crying no fewer than 10 times: Woken by a woman’s wailing in the street in the early hours: 3. Silent weeping on the metro: 2. Sniffy weeping on the metro: 1. Walking along crying openly in distress: 3. Standing by the tabac having a lovers' break up on a mobile phone, pleading with him not to leave, all red ringed eyes and uncontrollable snot: 1. As Lucy Wadham says in her book ‘The Secret Life of France’ the French want life to be constantly beautiful, therefore they cannot help but be disappointed. I, in my Anglo- Saxon way know that life is pretty ugly most of the time, so I am occasionally pleasantly surprised.

Because we English expect life to be miserable, we don’t have the taste for the ‘visual perfection’ kind of desserts that the French pâtissiers display like crafted jewels. We’re not interested in revering a damanding gâteau, some of which can cost a working man’s days wage, or a coquettish and high maintenance mille-feuille, which is lean and spiteful when you get under it’s corset! No, instead we go for the big, busty comforters, the girls we know and love, like a puffed up bread and butter pudding or a damson cobbler. These are puddings that hug you to them like a generous mother and indulge you in their comfortable familiarity, so that you leave them feeling well loved and happy, not toyed with, teased and spent.

Don’t get me wrong, I can wolf down six macaroons with a glass of Champagne in the afternoon as well as anyone, but however you flirt with it, a macaroon knows in its own bones that it ain’t no pudding. Watch them trying too hard, posing in their latest mode. Gold plated, or designer colour coordinated, a macaroon is still flighty, promising much but crumbling in the box or soggy by dawn.

If you want to cheer a French person up there is only one way to do it in my book. The wholesome, tooth licking love of a proper English pudding is hard to resist. Let them have a glass of Champagne, allow them to cry like rain on a dark day, then dab their eyes and sit them down to a bowl of warm Sticky Toffee Pudding with real Channel Island cream and watch their faces light up in the realisation that what you’ve been telling them all this time is true: Life really isn’t so bad after all.

The knave of tarts who stole the hearts - living on the bread line in the 10th.

Way back last Autumn, when I was in the middle of the traumatic mystery tour that is ‘finding a permanent place to live in Paris’ I had a pause, a moment of quiet stillness, I could say an epiphany, which became a defining moment for me. Remember, I was spending too many hours a day on the internet scouring web sites for possible accommodation; had traipsed to too many oblivious estate agents’ offices; and had fantasized for too long about Amélie Poulain moving out of her apartment and giving it to me.

It was a sunny, warm, September day and I had walked and re-walked the streets around Place de la République. I had crossed and re-crossed Canal St. Martin and I was starting to feel hollow. I quickly found a corner bakery (of course) and went inside. The French talk about ‘le coup de foudre’. When it occurs your pulse goes up and you get a little flutter, a surge of soft excitement and your fingers itch at the same time that you salivate. The minute I entered the bakery I experienced this uncontrollable response. Trays of pastry catherine wheels, traced with green and yellow and pink were placed like a child’s drawing of a bakery on large pottery dishes. Huge hunks of dark crusted bread were cut and piled like fallen rocks on a beach. The ceiling was an ancien, hand painted sky of blue glass.

Les vendeuses were smiling and responsive, coaxing and gentle with their customers, like lovely nurses, who realise that big decisions need to be made and this is not going to be easy for anyone. As I moved with the queue towards the cash till which was, believe me, a little like waiting to go up to the high alter to take communion, I spotted the sweetest and coyest of little bread babies. These mini pavés were arranged in neat lines of cobblestones of warm dough, each one wrapped around a different filling like a bready blanket. Amongst others were poitrine fumée with Reblochon cheese and prune, or pear and chocolate or goats’ cheese, fig and honey. I chose these three at random and bought a boulder of the bread from the beach, le pain des amis.

Walking in the warm sunshine towards the canal I first ate the Reblochon, smoked bacon and prune. I stopped, closed my eyes and lifted my face to the sun. This was food which brought the bliss of a first kiss. This was food which brought pure joy into a hapless day. I think a tear came into my eye. Yes. And in that moment I decided that, however mardy and dour the estate agents could make themselves, and however impossible a task it may seem for an Englishwoman to get a French landlord to accept her, this would be done, and what is more, it would be done within walking distance of this bakery.

Of course since that day I have done my research and realise that a really good thing just gads about. A bakery called Du Pain et Des Idées, with a baker like Christophe Vasseur, who states on his website “this profession is one of the most beautiful in the world as it allows the one who masters it to give a simple but intense happiness out of a piece of bread.” (I rest my case) just can’t help but be everyone’s darling. Yes, he’s the subject of a post on David Lebovitz’ blog and ranked 3rd in the pick of Paris’ best 5 baguettes on Paris by Mouth. He was voted Best Baker in Paris by Gault et Millau, his bread is served by Alain Ducasse in his restaurant, he has a Japanese version of his web site and is listed in Jamie Cahill’s book, The Pâtisseries of Paris.

Living up to high expectations, at Christmas Christophe produced sweet, spicy, sultry breads, but in the ‘treat ‘em mean to keep ‘em keen’ school of thinking, shut his doors from Christmas Eve until January 6th and is sorrily closed at weekends. Alright, he’s open weekdays, from an eye popping 6.45 in the morning until 8 o’clock at night, so I suppose he deserves his beauty sleep.

Now I feel there really should be a list of the 10 sexiest bakers in Paris (note to self). Who knows, there may be more out there, but a long, slow proving is one of Christophe’s own special moves. When he began he says, “I did not want to be just a baker. I wanted to be THE BAKER.” Well now he’s not just the baker: he’s my baker. I can trot across any day before or after work and pick up an intense piece of happiness. Christophe – j’adore!

http://dupainetdesidees.com/

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2008/09/du-pain-et-des-idees/

http://parisbymouth.com/du-pain-et-des-idees/

Sheffield à Paris porte à porte – living la vie douce-amère.

When I first came to live in Paris, my English friends had the perception that I was on a short holiday. Nearly a year later, now that I have a job in Paris, a long lease on an apartment and a growing number of French friends, there is a slow realisation that I am indeed here on a more permanent basis. The person who is most surprised about this is actually myself. I have lived with and loved the same man for 26 years. I now only see him every other weekend but when, after the exchange of a number of cryptic texts, I stand at Gare du Nord on Friday evenings awaiting his arrival on Eurostar, the mounting excitement I feel is something I honestly never experienced when we lived together. Our weekend is brief and well planned – a short, sharp shot of two days and three nights, when we have plenty to discuss and explore, in this romantic city, where we happen to have a home. On Sunday nights we go dancing and laugh about the way we used to settle down to watch Antiques Road Show. Life is varied and vibrant now - and romantic (if you know what I mean) but when we take a coffee at one of the early opening cafes opposite Gare du Nord on Monday morning, before he takes the first train to London, the inevitable sadness at the prospect of two self-imposed weeks of separation settles upon us. What am I doing here ? How will it feel if one of us dies and the other regrets the time we chose to be apart ? Well, ‘ne regrette rien’ is our response. We’re not ready for the arm chairs by the fire just yet and in fact we wonder if we will ever be able to live together full time again. We don’t suffer any of the inevitable day to day irritations which come from sleeping, eating and presuming too much in each other’s company. It’s a bit like eating really good luxury chocolate. If you indulge on weekends and holidays it tastes amazing, but if you gorge yourself every day, it really makes you sick. In fact, we agree that although the separation is sometimes painful, the true quality of the time we spend together brings enough sweetness to sustain us both. So, after the 6.45a.m. train left for St. Pancras this Monday, I went home and used the Sicilian lemons we had bought from Bastille market on Sunday and cooked up a jar of lemon curd. This bittersweet dollop of sunshine is just what a melancholy day in late February demands, comfortingly sweet, yet with a pleasantly sharp spike to remind you that more warm days are just around the corner.

Le tire-bouchon - the turn of the cork screw

I live no more than ten minutes walk from Gare du Nord, in a quiet backwater of Paris, where the smell of a good English pudding, made with a firm but fair hand, draws many a visitor to my door. Last Friday night however, it was not the lure of a hot Plum Duff, but that old pretender the tire-bouchon which brought a turn of French boys to my door. This is not the first time that I have been taken aback by the fact that the inhabitants of a nation obsessed with the production and drinking of wine, often go about without a cork screw on their person. Now that smoking is no longer de rigueur, it could be imagined that the request for a cork screw is the new chat up phrase du jour. But no, it really seems that the French are either too disorganised to carry a corkscrew (an essential piece of picnicking equipment which is ALWAYS in my handbag) or that they rest assured that they will never be too far away from someone else who has one. So it was, last summer, that I made friends with several groups of young beaux and this year made acquaintance with my sprightly, beaming new neighbours. It may well be that my beautiful young relatives were the ultimate lure for the group who surrounded us on a Seine-side picnic in the heat of June, but ultimately I am the holder, the keeper of the tire-bouchon, therefore it is me who takes on the initial negotiations in these old fashioned flirtatious encounters. In the case of my new neighbours the first request led quickly to a second request, which then led to a third bottle of wine in my apartment and ultimately a rendezvous in theirs. In conclusion, if you wish to have encounters in Paris, make friends, meet people then picnic on a warm evening and remember to forget your tire-bouchon.