If you were to take a recent visit to Paris’ Orsay Museum, you might be forgiven for thinking you’ve entered the museum of erotica. Courbet’s L’Origine du monde, 
has long been displayed here: an unbashful painting of the female genitalia, whose focal point doesn’t leave much to the imagination. However, perhaps the French are a little more prudish than you might think – when Jacques Henric released his novel using the painting for the cover of his work in February 1994, police entered a number of bookshops to remove it from display.
If Courbet’s painting doesn’t do it for you, perhaps this bit of 1970’s Kitsch erotica is more to your taste?! When it comes to domination and subservient fetishes, you can’t do much better than this unique table or chair. With a piece of glass and inflatable doll (or a very co-operative girlfriend) I dare say it wouldn’t be too much effort to create your own – it would certainly make for a talking point when you invite your friends over for dinner.
I hadn’t been to Musée d’Orsay for a good year or more, so it was nice to see new paintings on display (alongside a few of my favourites that appear to be part of a more permanent collection). The architect Hector Guimard (from the French art nouveau movement) has a number of buildings close to where I live and is well known for the Paris metro entrances.
I did have the misfortune to dine in the museum. A good friend from England was visiting with his girlfriend. We were all starving, so didn’t have much choice but to visit the Orsay restaurant. Despite the grandeur I wasn’t expecting much, despite the extortionate prices, and as it transpired, my expectations won’t exceeded in the slightest. They forgot one meal, and the rest was cold and tasteless. Still the room was rather pretty… not much compensation.
A very narrow house on the way to the Orsay Museum.
Paris has been hit by the cold front again, with a little frosting of snow today. It rather pales in comparison to Old Blighty, but we city dwellers relish the scenic snow-coated city (well I like it anyway). I have to credit Mme. Grenouille for these photos as she took them early this morning on her way to the office, whilst I took care of Bébé Têtard.
I got to sample the icy streets of Auteuil, though didn’t exert my rights at the zebra crossings, as the roads looked a little slippery, and cars here won’t stop for you regardless of the season.
Whilst the TV broadcasted video from around the globe of all the major cities celebrating 2010, what do we see of Paris – some twinkly lights on the Eiffel Tower that go off every hour regardless of New Years; I didn’t see or hear a single firework. Whilst I’m not one to celebrate Pope Gregory XIII’s calendar, Paris has never-the-less been pretty cheap this year.
Paris City Hall
Pompidou Centre
Mme. Grenouille’s Opera singer friend invited us over for a meal to see in 2010, so with Bébé Têtard in tow we caught a bus (all public transport in Paris is free on New Year’s Eve) and went to meet them in the 3rd arrondissement, as they live just a couple of minutes from the Pompidou centre, which itself is next-door to the main city hall.
Monsieur Opera’s partner (a relation to Dominique de Villepin, although I didn’t pry to ask in what way), is also multi-talented and fluent in Russian/English; they played piano whilst we were entertained with a private opera. Monsieur Opera’s last performance was at Notre-Dame, but unfortunately I missed out on that having to look after Têtard. Their slim build masks the deep and powerful baritone voice – it was a privilege to behold, although I had to move out of the room with Têtard whose little ears weren’t so well accustomed to the loudness.
Notre Dame, 1st January 2010, 2:30am.
Their talents also extend into cooking, and from some fantastic starters, we went onto foie gras with fig, and later pork, sweet potato and chestnut, finishing with a homemade Charlotte aux noix.
We always knew calling a taxi would be tough given the date, but had believed the metro would be operating all night long. When we got there it was closed! We tried the other lines, but met with the same fate, and faced the prospect of wheeling Bébé Têtard more than an hour across Paris, through the cold and crowds of merry celebrators.
This poor old camel was drawing punters into a restaurant opposite the Pompidou Centre
Paris is a lot more civilised than my memories of British cities at night, and whilst I did have to wheel around a couple of reservoirs of puke, and saw a tourist picking themselves off the pavement, there were no skirmishes or testosterone driven hordes rampaging the streets. People were queuing by the dozen around single taxis however, but by pure luck, we found one that had just dropped somebody off, and banged on the window before they made off. I managed to get to sleep by 4am.
I missed out on Paris’ snow last year as I had to wait on an important package, and now this year I have Bébé Têtard to content with, so my snow photos come from the warmth and security of the apartment (sorry if you wanted to see the Eiffel Tower or Champs-Élysées in a snowy scene!)
If you roam around Paris and notice that there’s a lot of unaccounted for space between the Haussmann architecture, that’s because they’re usually filled with courtyards and apartments. These photos are an example of that mysterious inner void, and the architecture here bears no real resemblance to the fanciful façades on the street. The view from the kitchen is also quite different from that of the living room.
I’m not sure how much more snow is due, but it’s been coming down for at least a good couple of hours now. If you’re scheduled to arrive in Paris soon, wrap up warm!
I should retitle this the Paris blog of neglect, but free time is a commodity that often eludes me, much to my undoing; I found the true cost of this the other weekend when I had first-hand experience of a French hospital.
Christmas has always been a busy time for me (being self-employed), and places in a local Parisian crèche is all about who you know; something I always suspected, but had confirmed after hearing from a couple of locals. So as it stands, I’m a work-aholic, baby raising superdad (in hindsight I’m glad not to have a baby in a crèche) still adjusting to this alien city, culture and language. I thought I was doing quite alright, until I woke up the other Saturday having had a man cold the night before, feeling a little short on breath. Assuming I’d caught the bug I get most winters, I ignored it, took a shower and felt reasonably okay until I stepped out and found it hard to catch my breath. Mme. Grenouille was feeding Bébé Têtard in the bedroom. I declared ‘Mme. Grenouille, I think I’m going to pass out now’. She came through to the living room as I sat on the floor trying to get my composure and breathe. She asked if I wanted a doctor to come over, but I pooh-poohed this as I have an aversion to doctors, and decided to get up and sit on my chair. This only exasperated my breathing and within seconds I really couldn’t breathe, at all and from not wishing to bother a doctor I told her to call an ambulance at once as I collapsed on the floor wheezing and fighting for every breath. I tried to remain calm, but then my body started doing strange things as my wrists bent over double, fingers went rigid, pins and needles throughout and found I couldn’t move my body. At this point that internal voice that was saying ‘stay calm, stay calm’ was changing its tune to ‘this is it, your time is up!’. I think I added ten years to poor old Mme. Grenouille’s life. She actually called the pompiers (firemen) who are medically trained and can get you to hospital rather fast. They arrived in about 2 minutes which was impressive. I lay half naked (fortunately got some undies on before leaving the shower room) as three Paris fireman stood around me (under any other circumstances I think Mme. Grenouille would have been quite titillated by the experience!) They spoke in French and threw in a bit of English, and after I got my breathing calmed to some degree I had to keep working on being able to move my limbs and hands which I was concerned I’d damaged. Eventually they took me off to Boulogne hospital, Mme. Grenouille stayed with the baby until friends could look after him.
Contrary to what most people think, the French usually only speak high-school English if that, and of course there’s no reason they should speak English fullstop, but it did make life a little tricky in the hospital as I tried to explain what had happened. The male doctor laughed and said ‘you’re not Irish are you?’ pretended to look worried (the France vs Ireland match had just been played with the controversial hand-ball induced goal).The female doctor kept saying something about tetany which meant nothing to me (I thought maybe they were saying tetanus, but that didn’t sound quite right and didn’t make any sense to me either). By the time Mme. Grenouille arrived and I left hospital I still wasn’t quite sure what had happened, but they seemed to think it was tetany or spasmpohilie and that I had to keep calm and relaxed. When I googled it, it turns out all French physicians are aware of this condition, but it is not properly recognised outside of France. If you’re going to fall victim to tetany, it seems France is the place to be!
I popped to the doctor who conveniently lives in the building right next door in a grandiose old Parisian apartment with ultra-high ceilings and elaborate sculpted walls and ceilings. Despite a two hour wait, she was very good, but quite cold and direct and remarked ‘everybody suffers stress’ (I hadn’t tried in anyway to imply I was an exceptional case!) She did seem to think I have asthma though, so if that is true I’m a bit surprised to be diagnosed at 32. Still she was a darn sight better than any English doctor who had told me I just had a general bug, there was nothing they could do and I should just rest in bed for a week or two. It also explains my lingering coughs that used to last a month or two.
Bon bref… How to live a less stressful life. Well I’m working on it, but Bébé Têtard and work are things I can’t ignore. Paris isn’t a stress-free city either. Just yesterday I went to pick up the bed linen from the dry cleaners. On my last visit when I dropped off a sheet, the lady asked how many items there were – I didn’t quite catch her question the first time and asked if she could repeat herself, and she very abruptly raised her voice and repeated it quickly as though I’d caused her some great miscarriage of justice; there was a malevolent look of scorn to accompany it. Yesterday some poor quietly spoken 80 year old woman was there, but had misplaced her ticket. This same wretched employee went ballistic at her, literally yelling, telling her how she’d been sick for the past three days, how she did not have the time or inclination to search for her laundry which could be anywhere. I was gobsmacked at the lack of professional courtesy, and if I’d been more fluent I would have stepped to the old lady’s defence. Her colleagues had stopped working and were just watching her fly off the handle too, until one realised she was going to continue shouting and getting things off her chest for some time, and so attended to me.
Afterwards I went to the boulangerie opposite where I thought I had come across my first English xenophobe, given she smiled a lot to the French customers and always looked at me with contempt and never once with a smile. Luckily on this occasion she did actually smile and was polite, so I think it was just her Parisian mentality and nothing personal.
Well, best put my nose to the grindstone and bring my entry to a stop, in my usual abrupt manner. I will surely try and write something more interesting prior to Christmas.
The froggy/roast-bif made an appearance in early August, but not before Mum and Dad rode the ambulance out of Paris to St. Cloud hospital at 6:15am. I’ll not rabbit on too much about Bébé Têtard (tadpole) as the subject of other peoples’ babies is quite boring to all but the parents. You’ll have to forgive one indulgent post, and I may post another about the experience of having a baby in France at a later date, as I’m sure it will be of some interest to other expatriates (it was a very positive experience). I also ask lenience on any grammar or spelling as I’m not quite firing on all four cylinders; feel free to tear apart my earlier posts though!
I guess life continues in more or less a similar vein, but a baby does cast a slightly different perspective to the city; mainly the ability to get around. A visit to Charles de Gaulle to see the pediatrician involved being crushed by the middle opening bus doors when the conductor allowed time for the pushchair, but not the father. The bus was already rather crammed when a second pushchair arrived, and then a third tried to board despite the driver playing the automated message to say, two pushchairs per bus (unless folded up), three times in a row. People might have been a little more understanding until they noticed an obese four year old, too heavy and old for the pushchair being stuffed full of crisps by the mother.
The metro is pretty filthy, so off limits to a newborn, therefore last weekend we invited friends over for lunch then took a stroll in the nearby park, Jardin du Ranelagh, which sits more or less nextdoor to Bois de Boulogne. I like this park as it has a few old fashioned features from the old Victorian styled swings that Mme. Grenouille used to play on as a child (no suggestion on my part that she’s THAT old!), there are pony rides and an ancient merry-go-round where children are given a wooden pole to catch hoops as they go round, and the Eiffel Tower pokes out in the background. Aesop’s Fable, ‘the fox and the crow’ is also brought to life with a rather enchanting sculpture.
We took to the shade of a tree and enjoyed some fresh air and warmth from the summer sun. The trees are already reaching their autumn potential, the seasons seemingly out of kilter.
I spied a couple of earwigs – an insect I haven’t seen for years – and I directed them towards our Parisian friend much to her horror, whilst explaining the name to her in English. Bébé Têtard spread out in our little circle sleeping soundly in the fresh air (earwig free I hasten to add). Whilst I may have missed out on a lot of the current summer, next year there will be a Bébé Têtard wanting to soak in sights and sounds.
When we split company and returned home, a very friendly middle-aged lady was in the courtyard outside the apartment and struck up a conversation mainly about babies and feeding. She even asked us what our names were (a very un-French thing to do) – she transpired to be actress Béatrice Romand, although neither of us were acquainted with her films. If there are any fans reading then you’ll be pleased to know she is charming in actual life. She’d just bought a small apartment to renovate and rent out.
The Crow and The Fox
Master Crow sat on a tree,
Holding a cheese in his beak.
Master Fox was attracted by the odour,
And tried to attract him thus.
“Mister Crow, good day to you.
You are a handsome and good looking bird!
In truth, if your song is as beautiful as your plumage,
You are the Phoenix of this forest.”
Hearing these words the Crow felt great joy,
And to demonstrate his beautiful voice,
He opened his mouth wide and let drop his prey.
The Fox seized it and said: “My good Sir,
Know that every flatterer,
Lives at the expense of those who take him seriously:
This is a lesson that is worth a cheese no doubt.”
The Crow, embarrassed and confused,
Swore, though somewhat later, that he would never be
tricked thus again.
Le Corbeau et le Renard
Maître Corbeau, sur un arbre perché,
Tenait en son bec un fromage.
Maître Renard, par l’odeur alléché,
Lui tint à peu près ce langage :
“Hé ! bonjour, Monsieur du Corbeau.
Que vous êtes joli ! que vous me semblez beau !
Sans mentir, si votre ramage
Se rapporte à votre plumage,
Vous êtes le Phénix des hôtes de ces bois. “
A ces mots le Corbeau ne se sent pas de joie ;
Et pour montrer sa belle voix,
Il ouvre un large bec, laisse tomber sa proie.
Le Renard s’en saisit, et dit : “Mon bon Monsieur,
Apprenez que tout flatteur
Vit aux dépens de celui qui l’écoute :
Cette leçon vaut bien un fromage, sans doute. “
Le Corbeau, honteux et confus,
Jura, mais un peu tard, qu’on ne l’y prendrait plus.
Popped to the Champs-Élysées this morning to catch a film completely forgetting the Tour de France was finishing there. The road was closed up when I arrived, in preparation for the grand finale.
When I turned around to grab a stereotype tourist shot of the Arc de Triumph (as if I didn’t already have enough of them), I managed to capture the creme de la creme of Paris tourists; I probably ended up with a better photo of him in mid-pose than his Mrs.
After the film Mme. Grenouille went to buy some new glasses from Grand Optical who say they can have them made and ready to pick up in an hour. Despite she is 8 months and 3 weeks pregnant, they left us hanging around the crowded Champs-Élysées for two hours, before calling and saying sorry, they didn’t have the lenses in stock to cut to size. By this time we were hot and fed up with the crowds which had expanded exponentially with each passing minute.
We left about an hour before the leader made his way up to the finish line. On my way home I stopped by the metro station La Muette as a few weeks ago I noticed they were renovating and had demolished the new walls to reveal the old signs and posters, many of which date back to the second world war. Unfortunately I’d left it a little late and the most interesting ones had been removed leaving a mixture of smaller morsels from the 1940’s to around the 1970’s.
Unfortunately I’ve had such little time to update my blog on a regular basis, and most likely within a week my life will be a big blur with the arrival of a little demi-froggie!!
My posts have been so infrequent of late that I’m forced to come up with these ridiculous titles and then waffle on, skipping from topic to topic at tangents that would bamboozle even the greatest Mathematicians.
Following a weekend of kitten-sitting (being woken up at 2am with a cat walking over my face with the same indifference as walking on a concrete pavement), I took advantage of Saturday’s free museum night (La nuit des musées). I hadn’t yet visited Rodin’s museum, and had Decartes’ aphorism floating around in my mind – I think therefore I am (Je pense, donc je suis), which is a little like saying ‘I breathe therefore I have a respiratory system’, except Descartes makes it sound a lot cooler. I also carried with me the childhood memory of the famous ‘Thinker’ statue. It’s actually the first one you notice as you enter the gardens, although the original statue is in fact only 70cm tall. As night crept in, they handed out free head torches to walk around the gardens. From the house you could watch dozens of lights move about like fireflies, lighting up sculptures with each random turn of the head. It wasn’t so practical to turn around and talk to your friend without dazzling them like a rabbit in the headlights, and when I returned home at 11pm lighting up Mme. Grenouille (who was in bed and had stayed at home) with my new headlight toy, I soon found myself in the bad books.
My shoelace situation (described in another random post) hasn’t improved. They were comedically long and forever dragging across the poo infested streets of Paris, so I went to Carrefour and bought a new pair… Not the smallest pair, but not the largest pair I could find either – 3,50 euros for some shoelaces (I do miss England for one or two things). Anyhow I’ve underestimated the size of my feet, and by the time I laced them up I can only just tie the daintiest of bows by using the tips of my fingers, so they now look even more ridiculous than before, but at least they can’t drag through any dog’s mess. With that said, two days ago I did notice, whilst in the metro, that a pigeon has plopped on one of them…
Yesterday I was coming back from the cinema (UGC have been showing films for 3 euros these past few days) on the metro and had to stand near the door. Near the adjacent door further along the carriage were a group of eight or nine year olds speaking in an Eastern bloc language (Albanian perhaps). I didn’t pay it too much mind, but did think it weird they were unattended. Unbeknown to me at the time, a lady tried to warn some Japanese tourists who stood next to them that they weren’t to be trusted. As the train stopped and the doors opened all I saw was a Japanese guy trying to force his way back onto the train as the doors started to close, and then the kids prying the door back open as they ran off. The guy’s lens cap was lying on the floor and they’d obviously tried to make off with his camera. I think he’d jumped out to retrieve it before getting back inside. There were some kindly souls asking the family if they were okay – they smiled and I think they were a little embarrassed to have the attention of the carriage upon them. This happened at the Trocadero stop near the Eiffel Tower. I frequently see tourists with valuable cameras carried without concern, and whilst this is the first time I’ve witnessed anything untoward first-hand, it’s not a very smart thing to do wherever you are in the world.
Now our froggy/roastbif hybrid is six months in development, we realised we weren’t going to get a summer holiday this year, so at the end of April we spent a week in Madeira whilst the mother-in-law looked after the apartment.
Feeding a Madeira Chaffinch
I hired a car and reckon I must have driven just about every road on the island; I certainly covered all the major ones following the coast and bisecting the island in several places. Imagine drinking a cold beer on a hot day with mountain and sea views for 1 euro, or eating fresh fish with plenty of side dishes for 8 euros, having an entire restaurant floor to yourself with panoramic sea views as far as the eye can see. It was really quite grim coming back to Paris when the holidays finished, and I required a little adjustment.
The brave and noble explorer, charting unknown territory.
Discovery of a never seen before Madeiran cow… Actually this one was quite aggressive and it took a while to get around it to follow the Levada. Six month pregnant Mme. Grenouille took some convincing that we weren’t going to be mauled to death.
Driving out of the tourist spots sometimes takes you to areas where you think you’ve stepped back a hundred years in time. With woman carrying large bags on their heads and old men cutting down sugarcane, or attending to banana plantations (actually it was largely the women attending to the crops), dressed in mucky rags. Many walk the long steep hills to get from place to place, and they stare intently at you. Even as we passed by, I’d watch in the rear view mirror and their heads would turn and their gaze would follow the vehicle until I’d driven out of sight. This also happened on occasion when we walked about places like Seixial, although occasionally Mme. Grenouille smiled and would greet them in Portuguese and then the deadly stare would break into a smile and a friendly wave or nod, so I guess it’s just a Portuguese thing.
One of the many sun lovin’ lizards. Although we have plenty of the critters in France, I never tire of them.
View from our terrace hotel in Boaventura.
Whilst taking a shower here I noticed through the translucency of my shower curtain that I was not alone. A LARGE orange centipede lurked on the other side! I hoped to hell it wasn’t going to move, but as the shower started it went on walkabouts all over the curtain and so I freaked out and ran into the bedroom (I’m truly pathetic where insects are involved, but I think big centipedes can bite!). As I stood on the rug next to the bed trying to get my heart rate back down, the bloody thing was on a rampage and having run (with it 100 writhing legs) out of the bathroom it was now on the same rug I was stood upon. A second before it ran across my foot I leapt onto the safety of the bed with my heart in my mouth and it was some time before I could resume that shower.
Driving up the road to Paul de Serra, I thought we were going to be stuck in this perpetual (though enchanting) mist, but after a long time we popped out of it and were all of a sudden on a dry, hot plateau, the highest on the island.
With the island being so far away from any mainland country (I think the closest is Morocco about 400 miles away), I joked about seeing another car without a P (Portuguese) registration plate. I’ll be damned if several days into the holiday I don’t see a British registration plate with a GB sticker!
Paradise flower, very typical to Madeira
Beautiful spot with cheap drinks and spectacular views.
I finally got around to watching the film, Cheri on the Champs-Élysées last week. It was nice to see that the photograph I provided was used on the very opening scene, and I was actually quite surprised to find this website mentioned in the list of credits at the end. It’s down towards the end of the list, and mentions my company name followed by ‘Paris in Photos’ – I pinched Mme. Grenouille and pointed enthusiastically when I spotted it, and spent the next five minutes basking in my lowly ‘fame’.
I hadn’t realised they’d been filming on the road literally just behind where I live, otherwise I would have poked my head around the corner to watch. It is known as the Hôtel Mezzara (60, rue La Fontaine) designed by Hector Guimard one of the most prominent architects from the French Art Nouveau movement. In the film, they show a cobbled street where Cheri approaches the house, but that was filmed at a slightly different location as the actual street runs parallel to the building.
I believe some of the scenes from the background conservatory of the country estate might have been filmed at Serres d’Auteuil botanical garden which is about half an hour’s walk from Lea’s (played by Michelle Pfeiffer) lustrous home.
The attention to detail to the Belle Epoque era in Paris is wonderfully done (I suppose technically the Belle Epoque had finished by 1915; the film being set in the 1920’s), and Michelle Pfeiffer plays her part well. All in all the film itself was a little flat and really not my personal cup of tea, but I could see the appeal it may have to a certain audience.
I feel like the larval butterfly emerging from its cacoon. On Sunday the windows of the apartment opened up and I could wear a t-shirt without fear of goosebumps. The sun found its way into the kitchen and as I feasted on wine, cheese, rice and vegetables with the sun nourishing my depleted levels of Vitamin D3. All seemed good in the world.
In the afternoon I went with Mme. Grenouille to meet her friend on the other side of Paris in the 12th district, next to Bercy park – a lot of big bands play here, including Metallica who are live in a fortnight’s time; I failed to obtain tickets though. 
Put two French chatterboxes together and they’ll do more than just talk the hind legs off a donkey, the front legs soon disappear too. Asides from feeling like an odd sock it was a pleasant afternoon, and we managed to leave just as the sun was coming down. Unfortunately I had no tripod so just rested on whatever I could find, and had to rush as I was in company. This very modernist part of Paris was particularly interesting, although futurist architecture doesn’t usually float my boat. The library as shown above, encircling a small pine wood, is a huge construction, I’ve not seen anything quite like it before. There were even chopped up logs down below, giving it the appearence of a managed wood in a surreal location. I’ll reel off the photographs as unfortunately I don’t have the luxury of time. I need to construct a new wardrobe from a flatpack job that arrived this morning.
This interesting bridge is known as the Simone Beauvoir footbridge. I know this thanks to surfAnna who did a small article about it in February (Simone Beauvoir Bridge). Funnily enough she has my domain name but in French (paris-en-photos.fr) and posts far more regularly than I ever do, with interesting photos of architecture from all over the city.
