French Letters
My, my ,my – I’ve just realized that I haven’t done very much blogging – read any – for quite a while. Life is definitely a nuisance and I keep falling over it as I put pen to paper. Always something as Gilda Radner used to say. Schools, bills, crisis, catastrophe, committee meetings, kids, birds in hand and birds in bushes, horses being dragged down to the pond to drink, rocks rolling up hill – it’s all here in my life and getting in the way of any sort of creativity. And I can’t think when it’s too cold, read Canadian winter – or too hot, read Canadian summer - or TOO BLOODY HOT like today when the outside temp is hovering around 100, the humidity is also 100 and the air-conditioner is blowing in my ear. I would rather it was some bronzed hunk with a six-pack but there you are, you have to take what you can get.
But I have news! We’ve decided, hubby and I to step off this tread-mill and throw caution [plus a fair amount of money] to the winds and take off for the open road. Well not exactly but a nice little Maison in France reasonably close to all the trendy bits along the Cote d’Azur but not close enough that our suitcase would have to be stuffed with Le Grande Euros heavy enough to sink a battleship. We intend to rent a place called Le Dragon Rouge which either means a serpent who uses too much makeup or a veiled insult to the owner’s mother-in-law I can’t be sure. Currently we have a tres slim grasp of the parley francais which is a situation we hope to improve rapidly and progress beyond the ‘I have left my umbrella on the train station’ stage toot sweet. Although I guess if you can say ‘ello’ [bonjour], ‘Goodbye’ [au revoir], ‘thanks’ [merci] and ‘shite’ [merde] then you can probably manage for a little bit even when faced with some snotty French waiter in Paris named Jean Luc Moutarde. My two old aunties came up against one of those some years ago on a cheap package trip to Gay Paree [can’t say that anymore in case it implies that squads of interior decorators waving Gitanes have taken over Montmartre. ]. After a day of sightseeing their feet were killing them so they entered a chic little bistro for a quick restorative cuppa. Unfortunately they didn’t know their francs from their elbows at the time so they poured all their money out on to the table the better to count it. Just then Jean Luc strolled by, scooped it all up and disappeared back into the kitchen. That’s when my aunties discovered what Merde meant. As in “Come back here now you little…”
Last time I myself was in Paris was some – ahem – ten years or so ago – oh alright 45, when I was a bright young thing of 17 instead of the wrinkled old prune that I have since become. I climbed the steps of the Sacra Coeur , sipped café’ at an outdoor table in Montmartre and drifted under the Arc de Triumph before being warned off by a soldier carrying a rather large gun from trampling all over some plaque in remembrance of Napoleon. He was pas amuse as I remember and gave me a rather unmilitary salute which I returned with one of my own. Unfortunately for my visit to the City of Lights [or is that Las Vegas?] the Louvre was closed that day and so was the Eiffel Tower – down for renovations to the ascenseur which was stuck, fortunately empty, on the umpteenth floor . Perhaps some bloke in a balloon had got himself tangled in the chain. Did you know by the way that there is an apartment up on top of the tower that Henri Eiffel himself used as his very own secret pied a terre? He probably spent much time up there in the clouds thumbing his nose at the British.
